Astronaut Scientific Debriefings, 1962-1963

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estimate it to be about 80 to 90%.
When I went over - the United
States was clear east of the Sierra's, but it "sacked in"
(clouded over) again by the time I got to the Gulf of Mexico,
so I just had a small band when you look at this part of the
United States .
This is not very much percentage-wise.
South
America, I didn't get to until the 5th and 6th orbits, so I was
over water all the other time.
The northsic portion of the continen t
was cloudy and finally I got into the clear on the 5th and 6 orbits
by the time I'd just left South America.
Aus t ralia, of course, was
ni ght, so it turned out that there wasn't much I could s ay about it .
·other than the fact that it was clouded over too .
I saw l ightning
as I got to the eastern half of Australia.
ill - You never saw any large view of water then?
In other words,
you didn't see any part of an ocean?
Schirra - No, I expected to have some fun looking at shorelines .
This is what I really wanted to look at, to see if I could see
color contrast and even the Pacific Islands.
I had hoped to see the
Hawaiian Islands which would have been a real e asy one to pi ck up,
and I think I had one little limpse; about as much as i f you 'd fly
9/10 cumulus structure and you pop one through there.
That's about
as much as I had and I couldn't even identify which Island I was
looking at.
O'Keefe
~ Probably Haleala or else ...
Schirra -
ight have even been Hawaii itself, I am not sure , which
is probably the highest of the bunch, and it mi ght have popped up
through it.