alt.hn

1/28/2026 at 7:43:39 AM

NASA's WB-57 crash lands at Houston

 https://arstechnica.com/space/2026/01/one-of-nasas-three-wb-57-aircraft-just-did-a-belly-landing-in-houston/

by verzali

1/31/2026 at 6:28:22 PM

The aircraft was doing touch and go's, it was planning to land and immediately take off again, something you typically do to practise procedures.

Speculation is that the pilot forgot to lower the landing gear, but I suspect the NTSB will likely determine the specific circumstances.

The radio traffic is here on the VASAviation YouTube channel:

https://youtu.be/zCTicb6of2w

by vk6flab

1/31/2026 at 9:42:52 PM

My uncle did a gear-up landing that way a number of years ago. He was fine, but the plane was a total loss from a financial perspective. It was a Moonie, and the prop hit the ground, which forced an engine rebuild as I understand it.

Scary, but as they say any landing you walk away from...

by ubermonkey

2/1/2026 at 6:47:00 PM

The article says it was a mechanical issue that forced the gear up landing?

by applied_heat

2/2/2026 at 3:27:31 AM

Doubtful, if so they would have warned ATC.

by thesh4d0w

1/31/2026 at 2:27:44 PM

What a bummer. We helped map the Kerrville floods for support of the state. Same day we mapped it, so did this WB-57 - only 35K feet above us. Such a historic and unique aircraft - I feel bad for the pilots onboard knowing it will likely total that aircraft even if it was a mechanical failure.

by heyflyguy

1/31/2026 at 3:31:48 PM

Was it flying at the same time? Maybe your plane is visible in the WB-57's imagery?

by dylan604

1/31/2026 at 3:48:15 PM

Maybe stretched out into one massive smear of a plane, like when you drag your hand across a flatbed scanner

by jstanley

1/31/2026 at 7:39:50 PM

How long of an exposure do you think they would be taking?

by dylan604

1/31/2026 at 11:59:01 PM

It's not uncommon for older aerial photos to be single-pixel lines that the film is moved past. The motion of the film is correlated with the motion across the ground, so you can reconstruct a 2nd axis from the exposure.

There's no shutter speed, it's continuous.

by jhayward

2/2/2026 at 2:03:32 AM

"We helped map the Kerrville floods"

"It's not uncommon for older aerial photos"

The Kerrville floods were last summer

by dylan604

1/31/2026 at 5:28:38 PM

I see comments about the saving the airframe on here. I bet it is salvageable considering the era it came from. It is like the difference between cars pre crumple zones and post. The 'cornfield bomber' story is an example of this [1]. Is it worth restoring vs is it salvageable are two different questions though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber

by jmward01

1/31/2026 at 6:33:33 PM

There probably isn't much structural damage to the plane aside from the scraping/grinding on the bottom. Don't misunderstand, that's going to be bad damage - we aren't just talking about scratched paint. But it looks like the pilot set it down soft as a feather, they're definitely a pro.

Planes are so expensive that it's worth putting a lot of money into saving them. A replacement airframe comparable to the B-57 would probably cost $10 million, then you'd probably spend that much again to customize it for NASA mission. Even if they need to spend a couple million dollars fixing the WB-57 it beats the alternative.

Edit: It occurs to me that rather than use a different plane they'd probably reactivate another B-57 from the boneyard - but B-57's have been retired for > 50 years to restoring one would still be a significant project.

by Merad

1/31/2026 at 3:51:30 PM

Beautifully controlled landing, well done to the pilot.

This is certainly a dumb question, but could a plane like this land on a softer material to try to save the airframe? Like a dry lake bed, marsh, or golf course?

by pants2

1/31/2026 at 4:09:34 PM

Softer material is easier for the a part of the plane to dig into the ground and then the plane will flip over.

Best example I could find: https://youtu.be/KEz-r3dpQdo

by silvestrov

1/31/2026 at 5:55:41 PM

Not a dumb question at all, but incident management in aviation is all about saving the people on board first and foremost. Saving the airframe during an incident is considered a very distant bonus at the very best. No pilot ever got in trouble for sacrificing their plane to make the smoothest possible landing to protect the squishy meatbags on board.

Landing outside the bounds of an airfield brings a bunch of other unnecessary risks as well, like hitting trees, people, cars, buildings, etc. And as a sibling comment noted, airports have a TON of protocols for emergency landings in place, such as clearing existing traffic from the runways and sky, and having ambulances and fire trucks standing by so they can be at the aircraft literally seconds after it skids to a stop. Golf courses typically do not.

by bityard

1/31/2026 at 6:25:40 PM

> No pilot ever got in trouble for sacrificing their plane to make the smoothest possible landing to protect the squishy meatbags on board.

Arguably Charles Del Pizzo did, quite recently.

by loeg

1/31/2026 at 6:50:22 PM

He protected one meatbag (himself) at the risk of an unknown number of other meatbags on the ground. They were right to fire him.

Context for others — https://www.postandcourier.com/news/special_reports/marine-f...

by sonofhans

1/31/2026 at 7:47:03 PM

It's not really obvious to me whether he control over the plane such that he could have made a difference to whether the plane interacted with humans on the ground, or not.

> Both investigations concluded that most highly experienced pilots with similar levels of experience in an F-35 would have punched out of the plane.

I don't think the article supports your conclusion definitively. Ultimately, we don't really know how controllable the aircraft was or how well instruments were working. (I'm sure the military has a somewhat better sense of this, but we don't have their unredacted internal reports.) In general it is very challenging to fly aircraft without instruments in cloudy conditions, and the risk is particularly high low to the ground.

by loeg

1/31/2026 at 9:20:43 PM

Either way, your original claim that he got in trouble for totalling the plane seems wrong.

by philipallstar

1/31/2026 at 10:15:07 PM

In what way? He was unambiguously punished, and it was unambiguously because he ditched the plane. The only point of contention is whether the ditching was justified or not. Hence “arguably” in my original statement.

by loeg

2/1/2026 at 2:01:10 AM

Usually, breaking the plane apart means the people on board will also be much worse off.

by userbinator

1/31/2026 at 5:43:47 PM

Concrete is smooth and flat. Emergency services have easy access. If you land at a shallow enough angle, you’re just scraping. Given how many planes there are in the air, gear up landings on a runway are well understood.

Plowing the plane into a soft, uneven surface is far less predictable. You never know if you’re going to hit a stump or large rock hidden by grass.

It doesn’t make sense trying to save the air frame if you’re going to risk destroying it and killing the pilot in the process.

by kayodelycaon

1/31/2026 at 9:22:03 PM

Not softer, because that'll make it lawn dart, but dry lake beds yes.

Edward's AFB is located at the edge of a dry lake bed exactly because it acts as a huge extended runway in case an aircraft under testing has problems landing and coming to a stop.

by jasonwatkinspdx

1/31/2026 at 4:07:09 PM

One consideration is accessibility for first responders once the aircraft touches down.

by sowbug

1/31/2026 at 6:22:08 PM

A more typical question would be whether landing on water would be a better idea. The answer is always no — it is always better for an aircraft to land at an airport. Always.

The most core reason is that airports are designed for airplanes to land on them. Everything else follows from that. But, concretely:

1. Most airports you'd be landing on have dedicated emergency firefighters already on site who are extensively trained for exactly this sort of an event, so they'll be on top of your plane within minutes of touchdown.

2. The runway is appropriately large, with enough clearance in all three dimensions to accommodate malfunctioning aircraft.

3. In an emergency, you want to normalize the situation as much as possible, so that the only non-normal factor is the one you're dealing with — here it's the lack of gear. It's much easier to do a normal landing and deal with one issue than to do a completely abnormal landing.

4. Concerns like fuel economy or material damage are nice-to-have luxuries that we can afford during normal operations. The second anything non-normal happens, the one and only concern is saving lives. I assure you the pilot of this plane was exclusively focused on getting his passengers safely on the ground.

by Mawr

1/31/2026 at 5:00:31 PM

1) Build a mobile platform with wheels that starts at the beginning of the runway

2) matches speed with the plane as it enters runway.

3) Plane will “touchdown” on the mobile base gently since speeds are matched.

4) Lock the plane to base and decelerate the base in a controlled manner.

If you can gently lock the base and plane you can even save the plane

by heyitsdaad

1/31/2026 at 5:06:14 PM

That's an episode from "Thunderbirds".

by zabzonk

1/31/2026 at 11:21:44 PM

Implementing a mobile landing platform for commercial or high-speed aircraft is a theoretically sound concept for emergency recovery or weight reduction but faces massive technical hurdles in precision, synchronization, and infrastructure.

Just make a huge baseball glove to catch the plane as it's approaching.

by MonkeyClub

1/31/2026 at 7:19:58 PM

You’re after a fast aircraft carrier.

by lostlogin

1/31/2026 at 6:16:22 PM

Ha ha, but seriously that couldn't possibly work with any significant crosswind.

by nradov

1/31/2026 at 7:58:46 PM

it just means the mold should be tilted with respect to the travel direction: if you have the technology to match the speed, surely you have the technology to rotate the receptacle in the horizontal plane to match the horizontal plane rotation angle induced by crosswind.

by DoctorOetker

1/31/2026 at 9:13:03 PM

The problem with such a silly, unrealistic Rube Goldberg style scheme is not only the aircraft attitude but the lateral velocity relative to the runway centerline.

by nradov

2/1/2026 at 12:57:17 AM

But don’t you think that’s how silly Elon’s rockets look like while they are landing?

by heyitsdaad

1/31/2026 at 5:02:00 PM

Next project: interstellar jump craft

by FpUser

1/31/2026 at 6:16:25 PM

The plane will run out of fuel during step 1 or while on the way to an airport that has already completed step 1.

by kortilla

1/31/2026 at 5:05:49 PM

That seems like incredible overkill for a 1950s era bomber jet, no?

by dmoy

1/31/2026 at 5:11:48 PM

It can be reused.

by amelius

1/31/2026 at 4:39:31 PM

Why is such an ancient plane still being used? Lack of funding to use something newer? Or it has some capability that can't be replicated?

I would imagine it's incredibly expensive to maintain. Are they machining their own engine parts?

by contrarian1234

1/31/2026 at 5:07:43 PM

> Why is such an ancient plane still being used?

Because it was designed to operate in the same atmosphere as we had in the 1950's, it's highly customized with unique instruments and communication gear specialized for NASA and its systems, and they have a big shop filled with tools and spare parts accumulated over half a century to adapt to whatever conceivable thing comes up. They could drop a few hundred million and replace their WB-57s, but there isn't a real need.

> Are they machining their own engine parts?

The WB-57 engines are basically downrated, high-altitude versions of the Pratt & Whitney JT3D/TF33, not the original Avons. They are still in service today in military applications, so servicing them isn't some extraordinary concept. Plus, they don't see many flight hours, as these aircraft (there are 3) spend most of their time in a shop getting reworked for future missions, so engine overhauls aren't that frequent.

> I would imagine it's incredibly expensive to maintain.

All such aircraft are incredibly expensive. However, the Canberra is as old fashioned rivet and sheet metal design, and modifying it is relatively straightforward compared to most of what is manufactured today. It was designed as a bomber and has a large fuel and payload capacity, and a handy bomb-bay with large doors, filled with racks of mission specific gear.

I suspect this one can be repaired and returned to service. That's not uncommon for controlled belly landings. It did not appear to incur excessive damage in that landing, and there are mothballed Canberra in various boneyards around the world to provide replacement parts.

by topspin

1/31/2026 at 4:43:15 PM

When I was in the Air Force in the early 1990s, we still used KC-135 "flying gas stations" that had been built during the cold war in the 1950s. While expensive to maintain they were far less expensive to fix than buying new and starting from scratch. With regular full maintenance checks in the hangars (wash them, inspect them with dental picks and flashlights, replace broken parts, etc.) we kept those planes in service and mission ready for decades.

There was an entire supply chain of every single part ready to go, with technical manuals for every maintenance task you can imagine. If we couldn't fix something, it would go to the jet lab or machinists or whatever.

The system in place is mind bogglingly good.

/edited for a typo.

by erickhill

1/31/2026 at 5:45:07 PM

Hell, the KC-46 only entered service a few years ago and they’re talking about extending the KC-135’s service life into the 2030s.

by derektank

1/31/2026 at 8:45:17 PM

The B-52H started rolling out of the factory in 1960 and is planned to remain in service until the 2050s.

by wat10000

1/31/2026 at 6:32:26 PM

I was part of a squadron that flew KC-135s in the mid 2000's. Those 135s looked positively modern inside and out, compared to the worn-out H-53s and C-130s that I worked on a few years prior at a training base.

by bityard

2/1/2026 at 4:21:46 AM

I mean I think people have been complaining about the KC-135 being too old for a very long time, and from what I heard the replacement was urgently needed. At least there I can see how there is really no good alternative - it's a very specialized plane. Here they just need a plane that can fly high and is easy to modify with new equipment. It feels like there should be plenty of other candidates. However, the other reply seems to imply it's not all that expensive to maintain

by contrarian1234

1/31/2026 at 4:41:35 PM

The WB-57 can fly at high altitude (>60,000ft) for long time. The NASA U-2 can fly higher but is likely more limited operationally.

by ianburrell

1/31/2026 at 7:55:24 PM

Yeah. Two crewmen, something like twice as much payload weight (originally designed to carry a nuclear bomb or two instead of a top-tier reconnaissance package), and apparently less ceremony in general than the U-2. The U-2 really wants to have a chase car (!) when landing to call out what the pilot cannot see, from the sound of things the WB-57 doesn't do that. (okay, some irony there considering recent events...)

by justin66

1/31/2026 at 9:57:33 PM

I was thinking about what could replace WB-57. Large private jets (Gulfstream G650) can get up to 51k ft, and maybe could be modified to go higher. Global Hawk drone can go up to 60k ft, and the Air Force is retiring them.

by ianburrell

1/31/2026 at 6:17:56 PM

It's MUCH more expensive to design and build an aircraft from scratch than it is to repurpose and maintain an existing design that fits the requirements. The major cost sinks are not even the design and manufacturing, it's all of the testing, certification, training, documentation, maintenance planning, and so on.

Plus, it's very likely that this plane is not an ancient as you think. New airframes are more efficient aerodynamically, weigh less, and offer more capabilities but depending on the role, those may not be huge advantages. Nearly everything ELSE on a typical airplane can be upgraded to modern standards. I haven't checked Wikipedia, but I highly doubt NASA's WB-57s are still running the original 1953 engines and avionics, for example.

by bityard

2/1/2026 at 4:25:19 AM

Making a new plane is obviously a major effort. Updating avionics/engine also seems extremely complex. However, the alternative I was suggesting is just using a commercial passenger plane (like a private jet someone else suggested)

by contrarian1234

1/31/2026 at 6:19:20 PM

> I would imagine it's incredibly expensive to maintain.

Everything that flies is expensive to maintain but the costs to maintain most older aircraft tends to be much lower than new ones, sometimes even if certain unavailable parts need to be rebuilt or fabricated. Part of the difference is newer designs tend to use advanced composites and manufacturing techniques which can yield increased performance and efficiency but are expensive and often require specialized techniques to service/replace.

The second factor is that funding, designing, validating and manufacturing new military aircraft platforms has grown astronomically expensive for a huge number of reasons.

by mrandish

1/31/2026 at 7:17:58 PM

Definitely not a Ryanair trained pilot with that smooth touchdown.

by a_paddy

1/31/2026 at 3:11:54 PM

That's not a crash, that's a controlled landing

by ekianjo

1/31/2026 at 3:59:18 PM

Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. If you can fly the aircraft again, it's a great landing.

by SoftTalker

1/31/2026 at 3:30:33 PM

That's the smoothest landing I've ever seen including normal ones on landing gear.

by dylan604

1/31/2026 at 6:38:54 PM

Pfft. Hold my beer: https://youtu.be/Q9WNnJprwzU?t=48

by Mawr

1/31/2026 at 7:07:29 PM

That was beautiful. Pilot managed to drag the tail and slow down enough that it looks like the engines barely took a hit at all.

by thesh4d0w

1/31/2026 at 3:20:28 PM

As neutrally as possible, a gear up landing is suboptimal.

by Retric

1/31/2026 at 3:49:23 PM

Isn't that "normally" done on a foam carpet prepared by the fire trucks?

by jcynix

2/1/2026 at 12:37:14 AM

"high friction landing" :)

by eichin

2/1/2026 at 6:09:29 AM

"lithobraking"

by perilunar

1/31/2026 at 5:16:26 PM

Ok so the plane is pretty much toast, though perhaps only the bottom of the fuselage as not sure if the wingtips touched the ground.

I'm wondering about the runway at this point, does that damage the runway significantly? It seems that a runway out of order would be a massive problem..

by clort

1/31/2026 at 5:26:47 PM

It probably did damage the runway a bit, but given that these ancient planes are no longer in production, the cost to repair whatever damage was done to the plane (looks pretty extensive, from the video) is likely much more expensive than whatever work is needed to fix the runway.

by lexiathan

1/31/2026 at 9:34:15 PM

Article makes no mention of “crash”. Please don’t make sensationalized edits of the title.

by coin

1/31/2026 at 4:52:44 PM

We should build a drone system that attaches to the underbelly of planes and physically pulls the gear down

by jasonincanada

1/31/2026 at 6:13:09 PM

Seems like controlled landings on the belly with the help of airport fire fighting crews tend to work though.

I assume this is made possible by explicit system (aircraft + airport) design decisions agreed upon 50+ years ago.

by lysace

1/31/2026 at 6:03:33 PM

Is that supposed to be a joke? The risk of a disastrous midair collision in that scenario is far worse than the risk of a gear-up landing.

by nradov

1/31/2026 at 5:12:59 PM

How about a drone system that IS the wheels.

by amelius

1/31/2026 at 5:37:07 PM

Much better idea. Like a flying roller cart

by esseph

1/31/2026 at 5:00:22 PM

Great idea!

And if needed, to actually swap defective landing gear parts to whatever extent possible. Maybe difficult or impossible with current aircraft designs, but maybe future ones could be designed with this backup option. Maybe a secondary landing gear insertion point or something.

by epicureanideal

1/31/2026 at 2:37:19 PM

What will happen to the vehicle after such crash landing?

Is it possible (reasonably) to repair it? or it will never fly?

by tester756

1/31/2026 at 2:55:34 PM

One of them was returned to service after 40 years in the boneyard in Arizona, back in 2011, I would expect they'll look at the other airframes there to see if they're suitable sources for a rebuild. Wouldn't be surprised if this is the end of this one though, it was already doing pretty well for a design that first flew in 1949 (the English Electric Canberra design that was then built by Martin)

by thomasjb

1/31/2026 at 3:41:38 PM

Wait, this is THE Canberra? The Mighty Canberra? The RAF Luton Canberra?

This gives those jokes an entire new dimension!

by pbalau

1/31/2026 at 9:16:26 PM

It's a mid-50s bomber. The skin will be easy to replace. Drill out the rivets, rivet on new sheet metal. I don't think it even dragged the wingtips.

Might be some complications with the nose gear and the payload bay (the main gear is on the wings, and untouched) but nothing terribly complicated. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it was designed with some assumption of belly landings; it's a warplane after all.

Repairs surely isn't automatic, and who knows how tight that's program's budget is, but planes are repaired from such landings all the time, and if they attach any value to the vehicle it can be repaired, and not at great cost.

by jccooper

1/31/2026 at 3:03:33 PM

It depends, but NASA has 2 more of these (currently under inspection, so not in flying condition). Given its importance, its most likely they will find a way to make it fly again.

by altmanaltman

1/31/2026 at 3:07:02 PM

I’m surprised that there are no airframes that can be rebuilt to support a similar function.

by xattt

1/31/2026 at 4:59:59 PM

it _is_ the airframe that was rebuilt to support this specific function

by vpribish

1/31/2026 at 7:58:35 PM

I meant other plane models that could be rebuilt for the same purpose.

by xattt

1/31/2026 at 2:38:54 PM

That depends on a lot of factors. What is the damage, how much would it cost to repair, and is spending that much considered worthwhile by NASA or whoever owns it? (Or whoever buys it after this)

by HPsquared

1/31/2026 at 3:26:05 PM

So the exact same thought process for any one dealing with insurance companies after an auto accident. This isn't really ground breaking analysis.

by dylan604

1/31/2026 at 5:11:18 PM

Indeed. Just laying out why nobody can know the answer at this point. Nobody knows any of those three yet.

by HPsquared

1/31/2026 at 1:41:40 PM

>> The pilot then maintains control of the vehicle

This seems to have been a training flight. Im sure the black box (if there was one) heard an excited "i have control" from the senior pilot once the grinding noise started.

by sandworm101

1/31/2026 at 7:23:13 PM

That paragraph had me snort.

Once you’re grinding along the runway, is there anything the pilot can do?

‘Video captured by KHOU 11 television showed the aircraft touching down on the runway without its landing gear extended. The pilot then maintains control of the vehicle as it slides down the runway, slowing the aircraft through friction.’

by lostlogin

1/31/2026 at 7:35:49 PM

From that footage we have absolutely no idea which pilot was flying, and certainly not what they were saying to each other.

We know they called "three green" to tower. It would be impossible to see three green with the gear up. Doing so would require a hundred one-in-a-billion things to happen all at once. So both pilots screwed up. In such a situation it is expected that the instructor/check pilot take over immediately.

Unannounced (ie surprise! Rather than a declared emergency) gear-up landings happen regularly and it always a pilot error.

by sandworm101

1/31/2026 at 5:00:01 PM

[flagged]

by Aspos

1/31/2026 at 1:52:26 PM

Is this the same one that was randomly in the middle east for an extended duration with no explanation?

by sidewndr46

1/31/2026 at 8:34:23 PM

[dead]

by JohnnyLarue