I really need to get a commission from you. :)

FOD walkdown on navy ships is an all hands evolution. Every person who is part of flight operations or maintainance on the flight deck is up there walking down. And there is always something found. It's amazing how often parts fall out of aircraft. Because, you know, NOBODY EVER LEAVES ANYTHING. . . or at least, admits to it. *sighs*

Biggest FOD we found was a C-5 landing gear wheel assembly along the side of the runway. It's ok, they have 27 other...

And they gave you a bucket to use? Wow!

awesome work.

Hahaha!

But it's a seriously important job. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people have died from runway FOD. I'm thinking of the Concorde crash in the Netherlands specifically, but I'm sure there are many other examples. Especially when full-effort military operations are involved.

Though I'm guessing some officer has already given them a pep talk explaining all this, and it's still a shitty job.

LoL F.O.D. walk-down time.

What a long, long day . . .

Totally awesome, Steve.

Gah! I love that bird character!

I have to admit to being a source of FOD myself. While a SP augmentee back in '75, I was walking a post on the OV-10 and O-2 flight line and while taking a break on a patrol truck, didn't notice that a round had popped out of my rifle when I removed the magazine(you remove the mag and clear the weapon when on break). It wasn't until the end of shift and I unloaded the rounds into the counter block (to make sure you came back with the same number of rounds that you left with) that I was short. Fortunately, the loose round was found the next shift before any aircraft movement.

Drop a coin in Him and see what comes out!

But... if they have robots advanced enough to be snooty about their valuable time, wouldn't they have a way to scan that flight deck? Technology would catch what a disgruntled soldier would miss.

An AI advanced enough to get snooty is way too valuable to be used for FOD patrol. An idiot simple space roomba or a couple of slacker recruits would be a better application of resource. And for the recruits, is intended to be an object lesson in attention to detail if they are ever allowed to do anything on a real piece of flying hardware.
As it is, things will not go well. It IS Mordecai and Rigby, after all.

Well.. there is a chance things might not go totally, hideously wrong. Surely a bird would understand the importance of their endeavors, wouldn't he?

Birds? Birds don't get FOD (and in the scenario, birds don't fly on their own except in dense atmospheres/light gravity settings) so are actually rather oblivious to such issues.

I know why airports for airplanes need FOD patrol - but in the EDF verse, wouldn't their landing ares be swept clean by the nuclear leaf blowers that regularly land there?

You'd think that, but taxi-ing machines can still shed parts, and looking out for blasted pavement is FOD too. And more or less conventional flying machines op out of them too.

Actually, that would probably make things worse, as bits of debris get launched into the air only to be sucked into engine intakes.

IDF style aerodynes have the intake on top, leading to a short ejector area, and the outflow. Even if something small is sucked in, it's not particularly do any damage on the way through. The same aerodyne reactor could power a water moderated plasma thermal rocket in the SSME range, which could replace all four engines on a 747 as long as you used the existing fuel tanks for all the needed water. They wouldn't have any intakes at all.

But as Steve said, if small aircraft like crop dusters land here too (or only?) then yes, they would have intakes, and won't be VTOLing, and it's worth looking for debris.

The Bucket Brigade...not glamourous...but it serves a purpose.

could be a lot worse then that, like mucking out the sewage treatment, and water recover system on a starship, that and dealing with spaceroches.......

Uhmmm, bio-processors, at least they'll get to wear suits. But in zero Gee.

Cool. Pick, I don't know these characters.

Hahahah!

I was the flight tower log PO aboard the USNS Flint when she was doing vert-reps ("vertical unrep [underway replenishment]," banana choppers hauling crates from one ship's helipad to the other's) with another ship whose name escapes me. Both of us were passing through the Pacific's golden shellback crossing (0° latitude, 180° longitude), and the other ship decided to launch a whole bunch of red, white, and blue helium balloons from her bridge in celebration of the passage.

This wouldn't have been a problem, except the vert-rep was still very much underway, and the idiot who authorized the launch thought the bridge would be high enough and far forward enough not to interfere. The pilots demanded in no uncertain terms that the whole of her weather decks be given a FOD walkdown before they would take to the air again. Thankfully, the choppers were in queue to my helipad when the balloons went up, or the pilots would've been panicked and furious as well. The ship's reaction and walkdown was amusing to watch and log.

More then a few years as KMCAS Hawaii, and every morning the FOD walkdown, good times that :} This was the view during those walks.