Astronaut Scientific Debriefings, 1962-1963

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mackerel effect that you see in clouds.
This is very much a ­
well, I would say if you· really wanted to do it - well, do· it in
water colors rather than chalk.
Nordberg - Did it cover your entire field of view?
Schirra - It covered my whole field of view, yes.
That's where I
"suckered- in" thinking that I was looking at "airglow- " what we
have used now - I think you understand how I have used airglow and
that there were cities below it and stars above it.
Then, these
cities were defined rapidly as stars and then I -
Dubin - You actually saw no horizon then?
And you saw none of the
regular airglow?
Schirra - No, _I could not see any vestige of the surface of the earth,
meaning the true airglow in this sense.
Dubin - What you saw then were some of the bands with stars above an d
below - you remember how high up you were looking?
Schirra - No.
If I had not had the fetish of conserving fuel in this
drifting period - was most important - not only conserving fuel, but
to see what effects the vehicle would get while it drifted over a period
of time; in other words, what this minute atmosphere might do to the
vehicle, whether it would spin it up or slow it down or what have you.
I could have picked up my attitude just by pitching down and pick i ng
up the surface of the earth.
But then I would have destroyed the
period of time that we had been drifting to see if the vehicle
attitude had been affected by the orbital period.
Roman - For something like that, would it be desirable to carry a
small mirror, something like a woman's pocketbook mirror, which you