Project Strato-Lab

Project Strato-Lab was the United States Navy's high-altitude manned balloon program carried out during the 1950s and early 1960s. Project Strato-Lab developed out of the Navy's unmanned balloon program, Project Skyhook as well as from the canceled Helios program.[1][2] The program was established and administrated by Commander Malcolm Ross (United States Navy) in 1954. Malcolm Ross and others developed the program to accomplish research required for the manned rocket program to follow. Although the Strato-Lab program set records in ballooning, scientific endeavor, and general aeronautics, Malcolm Ross stated that breaking records was secondary in importance to the investigative goals of the program.

The Strato-Lab program lifted the first Americans into the upper reaches of the stratosphere since World War II. 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. These culminated in a world-record-setting flight by Malcolm Ross and Lieutenant Commander Victor Prather (United States Navy) to 34,668 meters (113,740 feet) above sea level, on May 4, 1961. Victor Prather drowned during the recovery operation. Their general high altitude flight record held for just one day - on May 5, 1961, Alan Shepard flew on the Mercury Redstone manned sounding rocket - but the record still stands for manned balloon flight.