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NASA's WB-57 crash lands at Houston
- vk6flab 9mo agoThe 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 https://youtu.be/zCTicb6of2w
- ubermonkey 9mo agoMy 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...
- fsckboy 9mo agoMooney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooney_International_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooney_International_Corporati... (Moonie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unification_Church_of_the_Unit... )
- ubermonkey 9mo agoI assure you it was an airplane and not a cultist.
- applied_heat 9mo agoThe article says it was a mechanical issue that forced the gear up landing?
- thesh4d0w 9mo agoDoubtful, if so they would have warned ATC.
- a_paddy 9mo agoDefinitely not a Ryanair trained pilot with that smooth touchdown.
- JohnnyLarue 9mo ago[dead]
- coin 9mo agoArticle makes no mention of “crash”. Please don’t make sensationalized edits of the title.
- sandworm101 9mo ago>> 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.
- lostlogin 9mo agoThat 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.’
- sandworm101 9mo agoFrom 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.
- Aspos 9mo ago[flagged]
- sidewndr46 9mo agoIs this the same one that was randomly in the middle east for an extended duration with no explanation?
- heyflyguy 9mo agoWhat 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.
- dylan604 9mo agoWas it flying at the same time? Maybe your plane is visible in the WB-57's imagery?
- jstanley 9mo agoMaybe stretched out into one massive smear of a plane, like when you drag your hand across a flatbed scanner
- dylan604 9mo agoHow long of an exposure do you think they would be taking?
- jhayward 9mo agoIt'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.
- dylan604 9mo ago"We helped map the Kerrville floods" "It's not uncommon for older aerial photos" The Kerrville floods were last summer
- tester756 9mo agoWhat will happen to the vehicle after such crash landing? Is it possible (reasonably) to repair it? or it will never fly?
- jccooper 9mo agoIt'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.
- HPsquared 9mo agoThat 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)
- thomasjb 9mo agoOne 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)
- ekianjo 9mo agoThat's not a crash, that's a controlled landing
- eichin 9mo ago"high friction landing" :)
- perilunar 9mo ago"lithobraking"
- Retric 9mo agoAs neutrally as possible, a gear up landing is suboptimal.
- jcynix 9mo agoIsn't that "normally" done on a foam carpet prepared by the fire trucks?
- ranger207 9mo agoNo, the FAA recommends against creating a foam path. It reduces braking effectiveness and uses up supplies that might be needed to actually fight a fire https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/airports/airport_safety/certalerts/cert0204.rtf https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/airports/airport_saf...
- dylan604 9mo agoThat's the smoothest landing I've ever seen including normal ones on landing gear.
- Mawr 9mo agoPfft. Hold my beer: https://youtu.be/Q9WNnJprwzU?t=48 https://youtu.be/Q9WNnJprwzU?t=48
- ortusdux 9mo agoSee also - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46788327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46788327
- pants2 9mo agoBeautifully 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?
- kayodelycaon 9mo agoConcrete 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.
- bityard 9mo agoNot 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.
- loeg 9mo ago> 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.
- sonofhans 9mo agoHe 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-fighter-jet-eject-north-charleston/article_80d55e4a-f600-11ef-8ef4-03f14319ce57.htm https://www.postandcourier.com/news/special_reports/marine-f...
- contrarian1234 9mo agoWhy 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?
- bityard 9mo agoIt'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.
- contrarian1234 9mo agoMaking 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)
- mrandish 9mo ago> 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.
- 9mo ago
- jasonincanada 9mo agoWe should build a drone system that attaches to the underbelly of planes and physically pulls the gear down
- nradov 9mo agoIs 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.
- lysace 9mo agoSeems 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.
- epicureanideal 9mo agoGreat 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.
- amelius 9mo agoHow about a drone system that IS the wheels.
- esseph 9mo agoMuch better idea. Like a flying roller cart
- heyitsdaad 9mo ago1) 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
- nradov 9mo agoHa ha, but seriously that couldn't possibly work with any significant crosswind.
- DoctorOetker 9mo agoit 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.
- nradov 9mo agoThe 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.
- heyitsdaad 9mo agoBut don’t you think that’s how silly Elon’s rockets look like while they are landing?
- kortilla 9mo agoThe plane will run out of fuel during step 1 or while on the way to an airport that has already completed step 1.
- lostlogin 9mo agoYou’re after a fast aircraft carrier.
- clort 9mo agoOk 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..
- lexiathan 9mo agoIt 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.
- jmward01 9mo agoI 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornfield_Bomber
- Merad 9mo agoThere 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.