{"id":1244,"date":"2009-07-23T09:14:54","date_gmt":"2009-07-23T14:14:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1244"},"modified":"2009-07-24T11:34:57","modified_gmt":"2009-07-24T16:34:57","slug":"day-3-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1244","title":{"rendered":"Day 3 begins…"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>I spent 8 years living and working in Saudi Arabia.\u00a0 As anyone who lives in the desert will tell you, the sunrises are spectacularly beautiful.\u00a0 This picture is of sunrise over Edwards Air Force base this morning…<\/p>\n

In the sunrise picture, you’ll note a garbage can in the foreground labeled “FOD” – I’ve included a close-up picture of this also.\u00a0 FOD is an acronym for one of two things; the “FO” stands for “Foreign Object” while the “D” can stand for ‘debris’ or ‘damage’.\u00a0 If you find an object on the desert floor out on the lakebed, you pick it up and put it in a FOD can (or throw it away or something – just get it off of the lakebed).\u00a0 Airplanes land there and the last thing they need is any “Foreign Object Debris” to cause grief.\u00a0 If a plane is damaged by some such object, than it is said to have been “FODDED” – “Foreign Object Damage”.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Great care is taken here to prevent FOD.\u00a0 When vehicles come off of the lakebed and cross the runways to get back to the hanger (or wherever they’re going), they are required to do a FOD check before they cross the runway.\u00a0 You stop the car and go around and check all the tires for rocks and other debris.<\/p>\n

FOD is a big deal here and rightly so.\u00a0 Anyone who doubts that a small piece of metal or other debris could be harmful to an aircraft only need remember Concorde Flight 4590 – a flight that crashed due to picking up a piece of metal on takeoff.<\/p>\n

[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=Qid2s89OfZU[\/youtube]<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

(Click on a picture thumbnail to see a larger version of the picture) <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent 8 years living and working in Saudi Arabia.\u00a0 As anyone who lives in the desert will tell you, the sunrises are spectacularly beautiful.\u00a0 This picture is of sunrise over Edwards Air Force base this morning… In the sunrise picture, you’ll note a garbage can in the foreground labeled “FOD” – I’ve included a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1244","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-announcements","category-spaceelevatorcompetitions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1244"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1244\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1244"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1244"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1244"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}