Visors up

[nickrulercreator]

As seen in this photo:



Jack Schmitt's visor is clearly up and he is staring into, or near, the sun. Now, I am a landing believer. It's obvious we went. But, how did Schmitt not get blinded by the sun? I know radiation wouldn't have eaten him alive, but I feel as if he should at least be somewhat impaired by looking at the sun, right?

[bknight]

He is looking down and to his right so not into the full glare of the sun, similar to looking down and to the right facing east on morning here on earth.  He probably wanted to get a look at something without the tint of his protective visor.

[sts60]

They had multiple shades they could move up and down to adjust incoming light.  But the dayside Moon is not that much brighter than dayside Earth on comparable ground: on the order of 1/5 brighter.  The UV is mostly blocked by the clear Lexan, so the shades weren't required at all times; just for visual relief and moderating IR heating.

Oh, and welcome to the board!

[onebigmonkey]

He simply felt more comfortable that way. There are several moments in the TV broadcast where you can see him putting his visor up and down as required, and he got many reminders from Houston about it.

Even in the image posted you can see that half his face is in shadow, and that the sun is not shining in the direction that he's looking towards. People can walk around and function quite normally on Earth without the aid of sunglasses, same on the moon.

[Count Zero]

Iirc, Schmitt got a big ol' scratch on his gold visor that obstructed his vision.  That's why he had it up so much.  As for brightness, sunlight in space (whether on the Moon or in LEO) is only ~10-20% brighter than on Earth.

[JayUtah]

Yup, Lexan is pretty scratchable.  Great impact resistance though.  The Apollo helmet at our planetarium is pretty scratched up.

[Obviousman]

Mind you, Mission Control weren't that happy with visors being up; they'd ask for it to be kept to a minimum and on occasion reminded the lunar walkers to lower them.

[raven]

Moreover, while fairly rare, you can find visor up photos taken in Low Earth Orbit, and it hardly needs to be said the glare issues would be basically the same in both environments. It's not like in the movie Deep Impact where raising your visor gives you a terminal case of sunburn. For one, polycarbonate is pretty opaque to many UV frequencies, from what I understand, and those are the ones that cause problems like literally sunburning your retina.

[Count Zero]

I always thought people reacted unfairly to that scene in Deep Impact.  Logically, the best place to alter the orbit of a comet is at or near perihelion, so that's obviously where they were; but you don't really need to know that to figure out that, "Hey. if a guy raises his visor and gets burned by the Sun, that must mean he's much closer to the Sun than the Earth is."

[raven]

I always thought people reacted unfairly to that scene in Deep Impact.  Logically, the best place to alter the orbit of a comet is at or near perihelion, so that's obviously where they were; but you don't really need to know that to figure out that, "Hey. if a guy raises his visor and gets burned by the Sun, that must mean he's much closer to the Sun than the Earth is."

It's a very specific sounding distance where  raising the visor makes you Human Crackling in seconds but lowered you just need to dodge the steam geysers popping up around you.

[bknight]

I always thought people reacted unfairly to that scene in Deep Impact.  Logically, the best place to alter the orbit of a comet is at or near perihelion, so that's obviously where they were; but you don't really need to know that to figure out that, "Hey. if a guy raises his visor and gets burned by the Sun, that must mean he's much closer to the Sun than the Earth is."

It's a very specific sounding distance where  raising the visor makes you Human Crackling in seconds but lowered you just need to dodge the steam geysers popping up around you.

Its Hollyweird!!!