Project Strato-Lab was a high-altitude manned balloon program sponsored by the

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

during the 1950s and early 1960s. The Strato-Lab program lifted the first Americans into the upper reaches of the stratosphere since World War II. Project Strato-Lab developed out of the Navy's unmanned balloon program, Project Skyhook. The program was established in 1954 and administrated by Commander Malcolm Ross (

). Malcolm Ross and others developed the program to accomplish research required for the manned rocket program to follow. This program provided biomedical data that was used for subsequent efforts in space. Malcolm Ross launched five numbered flights (Strato-Lab 1 through Strato-Lab 5) as well as other unnumbered flights. Strato-Lab was developed to allow humans to make observations and perform experiments in the upper reaches of the stratosphere using balloons constructed of a thin

polyethylene Polyethylene or polythene (abbreviated PE; IUPAC name polyethene or poly(methylene)) is the most commonly produced plastic. It is a polymer, primarily used for packaging ( plastic bags, plastic films, geomembranes and containers including b ...

plastic film. These balloons were developed during the earlier Projects Helios and Skyhook by

Jean Piccard Jean Felix Piccard (January 28, 1884 in Basel, Switzerland – January 28, 1963 in Minneapolis, Minnesota), also known as Jean Piccard, was a Swiss-born American chemist, engineer, professor and high-altitude balloonist. He invented cluster ...

and Otto C. Winzen. Their purpose was to reduce the weight of the balloons to a fraction of previous rubber balloons. The Strato Lab program used both open and pressurized gondolas built by Winzen Research Inc and the balloon program in the Mechanical Division of General Mills, Inc. Strato-Lab built on the earlier programs with goals to obtain fundamental data in the fields of astronomy, astro and atmospheric physics, and human physiology at high altitudes. The Strato-Lab flights made a number of contributions to the manned space flight program. One set of experiments demonstrated that protons from

solar flare A solar flare is an intense localized eruption of electromagnetic radiation in the Sun's atmosphere. Flares occur in active regions and are often, but not always, accompanied by coronal mass ejections, solar particle events, and other sol ...

activity posed a serious risk to humans working in space. This contributed to developing methods of predicting and monitoring solar flare activity. Strato-Lab also contributed to early astronomical observations above the bulk of the Earth's atmosphere. Secondarily to the scientific objectives of the program, Strato-Lab set a number of records for scientific endeavor and general aeronautics. The Strato-Lab flights culminated in a record-setting flight on May 4, 1961, by Commander Malcolm Ross and Lieutenant Commander Victor Prather (USN) to test the Navy's Mark IV full-pressure suit. The Mark IV suit overcame problems of weight, bulk, ventilation, air and water tightness, mobility, temperature control, and survival capabilities so well that

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

selected a modified version for use by the

Project Mercury Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Un ...

astronauts. The May 4 flight was the most severe test of the suits conducted. The flight set an altitude record of 113,740 feet (34.67 km), lasted 9 hours 54 minutes, and covered a horizontal distance of . The research goals of the flight were successful, but Victor Prather drowned during the helicopter recovery from the

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of the United ...

. For the record ascent, President

John F. Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until his assassination ...

presented the balloonists (Victor Prather, posthumously to his wife) the 1961

Harmon Trophy The Harmon Trophy is a set of three international trophies, to be awarded annually to the world's outstanding aviator, aviatrix, and aeronaut (balloon or dirigible). A fourth trophy, the "National Trophy," was awarded from 1926 through 1938 to th ...

for Aeronauts. The

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

cosmonaut An astronaut (from the Ancient Greek (), meaning 'star', and (), meaning 'sailor') is a person trained, equipped, and deployed by a human spaceflight program to serve as a commander or crew member aboard a spacecraft. Although generally r ...

Yuri Gagarin Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin; Gagarin's first name is sometimes transliterated as ''Yuriy'', ''Youri'', or ''Yury''. (9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968) was a Soviet pilot and cosmonaut who became the first human to journey into outer space. T ...

had orbited the Earth almost a month earlier, on April 12, 1961; and the next day, on May 5,

Alan Shepard Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. (November 18, 1923 – July 21, 1998) was an American astronaut, naval aviator, test pilot, and businessman. In 1961, he became the second person and the first American to travel into space and, in 1971, he beca ...

flew a sub-orbital trajectory on the Mercury

Redstone rocket The PGM-11 Redstone was the first large American ballistic missile. A short-range ballistic missile (SRBM), it was in active service with the United States Army in West Germany from June 1958 to June 1964 as part of NATO's Cold War defense of W ...

Notes

External links

Stratolab, an Evolutionary Stratospheric Balloon Project
article by Gregory Kennedy
Stratolab gondola
at the National Naval Aviation Museum, NAS Pensacola, Florida Accidents and incidents involving balloons and airships Accidents and incidents involving United States Navy and Marine Corps aircraft Aviation accidents and incidents in 1961 Aviation records Individual balloons (aircraft) 1961 disestablishments in the United States United States Navy in the 20th century Military projects of the United States * {{cite journal , title=High Altitude Balloon Research and Development Programs , date=22 April 1960 , last=Childs , first=Captain Donald R. , journal=United States Navy Medical Newsletter , publisher=U.S. Navy. Bureau of Medicine and Surgery , volume = 35 , issue = 8 , pages = 28–35 , url=https://archive.org/details/NavyMedicalNewsletter19600422 , access-date = 19 June 2015