Astronaut Scientific Debriefings, 1962-1963

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79
Nordberg - How about color?
Was it very dark blue?
Schirra -
Oh it went from blue to black.
Not an appealing
blue by any means.
Dunkelman - Well, really to be fair to an astronaut, one ought to
take a replica of the window and go in the dark room and illuminate
it side-wise with a xenon arc or a solar simulator or somethi ng
that will come near it and then look out and see what you can 'see,
and I am afraid that it is going to be pretty miserable.
Nordberg - It worked well in an experiment.
Dunkelman - I think it should be done ... it's the sort of thing you
should do.
Schirra -
We continually do this in airplanes at 50,000 feet in
daylight and the sky is quite dark.
It's very dark to you.
It
turns out that all this incident light that's re f lecting around
this panel - just b~cause its plastic, it feeds light through it
much like a fibre optics system and becomes a glowing panel that
you are looking through here .
O'Keefe - The full moon which is as "black" as ... yet we all ·
know that the full moon just about blasts the sky.
That means
that if when you are looking out of that window, you see any
object which is illuminated by the sun, and which is as big as
one-inch ten feet away, you've got the equivalent of illumination
by the full moon in terms of you know, disturbing your adaptation.
Schirra - Oh yes.
O'Keefe - Even if it's painted black and of course, you are not
likely to be that lucky ... you are likely to have some nice, bright