Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in ... - The Black Vault

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First Steps into Space: Projects Mercury and Gemini
and I left it down throughout EVA. I think on a later flight we might recommend
going ahead and lifting the visor and observing any changes we might see in visual
acuity when looking down at the ground. The ground vision through the visor
really didn’t seem to me to be degraded at all. Evidently just the intensity, and not
what I was seeing, was cut down.
McDivitt
Let me comment a little bit on that visor. I didn’t have a visor, and the bright
sunlight that was in the cockpit didn’t seem to bother me. I imagine that the visor
turned out just like a pair of sunglasses. You go outside on a normal day and wear
a pair of sunglasses. If you don’t have them, you’re squinting. But if you start out
without them you tend to get accustomed to it. I think I was accustomed to what
light there was coming through the spacecraft, admittedly much less than that
outside. Ed was accustomed to the sun visor and it turned out just like two people
with and without sunglasses. They both could have adapted. I didn’t look into the
bright sun straight ahead.
White
Well, the first time I looked into the bright sun, the first thought I had was, “Boy!
Am I glad I’ve got this visor on!”
McDivitt
I know you mentioned it on the radio.
McDonnell
-- because I was looking straight into the sun. I had to look into it to attach the
camera onto the adapter section. I don’t normally wear sunglasses. As you know,
Jim, I have never worn sunglasses very much, and I didn’t notice it from then
on, throughout the time I was out. I had no impulse whatever to lift my visor.
My vision was as clear as I could have expected it to be without the visor. There
are a few design points in the visor that we could make better and I’ll briefly go
into them right now. When you are seated in the spacecraft one visor slips up
underneath the other and back along the back of your helmet, so that instead of
resting on your helmet on the headrest you’re resting the visor on the headrest.
You certainly don’t want to do that. The visor should be restrained in some
manner from slipping up along the back of the helmet. Also, my visor was quite
difficult for me to raise and lower. Once it was down it fit quite snugly, for which
I was happy. But it was difficult for me [4-56] to raise and lower. It was actually a
two-handed operation, which is one of the reasons why I didn’t raise it outside,
although I had no impulse to raise it when I was outside. I think that we might be
able to design them to be raised up and down more easily.
McDivitt
Let me make a comment on that visor. I never did see any need for the little
lexion visor.
White
That’s exactly the point I was going to get to next. I think that one single visor
made as close to the helmet liner as possible, providing the maximum amount of
headroom and a min imum amount of interference, is what we actually need. I