Sled Driver

how often I adjusted my glasses or scratched my face until I put on a space helmet.
On the first few flights, I tried to scratch my face only to find my fingers interrupted
by a face plate I had forgotten was there.
The helmet had an adjustable dark visor to protect from the bright sun at high
altitude. Using the dark visor was not always helpful. Bright sunlight caused glare on
the gauges and provided a large contrast to the shade in the cockpit. Pulling the dark
visor down made reading instruments nearly impossible under these conditions.
The solution was lowering the sunshades to block the sun and wearing the visor in
the up position. The sunshades were similar to the sun visors found in automobiles.
They could be moved in a variety of positions and even expanded to cover a greater
area. As the jet proceeded through different phases of flight, the pilot continually
repositioned the shades to block glare so he could clearly see important
instruments. Refueling on a sunny day was one time where the dark visor was used.
The only serious problem I encountered with my space suit was when I lost suit
heat in the middle of a sortie. The cockpit did not have vents to provide warm air like
other airplanes. With the suit heat inoperative, the overall cold wasn't too bad on
my body, because the space suit offered some protection. But my hands began to
feel the numbing cold and I was starting to lose the feel of my fingers through the
gloves. I remembered from training that the windows in the cockpit heated to about
550 degrees Fahrenheit when cruising at Mach 3. We were going faster than that so
I knew the windows must be warm even on the inside. I placed my gloved hand
against the window. In seconds, my hand was not just warm, it was hot. With care, I
was able to complete the mission by intermittently warming my hands by gently
placing them against the windows.
NIGHT
Part of our training included learning to fly the SR-71 at night. Night flying in any
aircraft was challenging, but it was even more difficult in the Sled. The airplane's
cockpit lighting had changed very little since it was first built, and the old-style system
did not uniformly illuminate all the gauges. If the lights were turned up so the dimmest
gauge could be easily read, the cockpit flooded with light that bounced off the inward
canting of the side windows and the sharp-angled front windscreen. The windscreens
became mirrors reflecting the cockpit scene back to me, and obstructed my ability to
see out. By turning the lights down low, I reduced these distracting