Victor Prather

Lieutenant Commander Victor A. Prather Jr. (June 4, 1923 – May 4, 1961) was an American flight surgeon famous for taking part in "Project RAM", a government project to develop the space suit. On May 4, 1961, Prather drowned during the helicopter transfer after the landing of the Strato-Lab V balloon flight, which set an altitude record for manned balloon flight which stood until 2012.

Life
Prather was born on June 4, 1923, in Lapeer, Michigan, to Victor Prather Sr. and Gladys May Furse. He attended Tufts College in 1941, and became part of the V-12 program there from 1943 to 1945. He graduated from Tufts in 1945 and then attended Tufts University School of Medicine, graduating there in 1952.

In 1954, Prather rejoined the United States Navy. He worked as a surgeon aboard the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La near Morocco until 1957, when he returned to the United States. He then completed courses in aviation medicine and served in Pensacola, Florida from 1957 to 1958, and then in Honolulu, Hawaii from 1959 to 1960.

Project RAM
In 1960, Prather was transferred to Project RAM, a government program to test prototype space suits, at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. He was commissioned to test how the suits worked underwater, and later commissioned to see how the suits would function at extremely high altitudes.

The flight
On May 4, 1961, at 7:08 am, Victor Prather, along with Cdr. Malcolm Ross, ascended in Strato-Lab High V from the flight deck of the USS Antietam (CV-36) to an altitude of 113,720 feet (34,668 meters) to test the Navy's Mark IV full-pressure suit.

The balloon, built by Winzen Research Inc. of Minneapolis, Minnesota, was constructed of polyethylene plastic only .001 in thick. The 10 Mcuft balloon envelope was the largest that had ever been successfully launched, expanding to 300 ft in diameter when fully inflated. Beneath the balloon hung a large parachute and then the gondola. To control temperature, the gondola was protected by special venetian blinds, but otherwise open to space. Balloon, parachute, gondola, and a trailing antenna made a craft close to 500 ft tall.

The primary objective of the flight was to test the Mark IV full-pressure suit. The suit was manufactured by B. F. Goodrich of neoprene and weighed only 20 lb. The Mark IV suit overcame problems of weight, bulk, ventilation, air and water tightness, mobility, temperature control, and survival capabilities so well that NASA selected a modified version for use by the Project Mercury astronauts. Malcolm Ross and Victor Prather were exposed to temperatures as low as -94 °C when they passed 53000 ft at 8:10 am. Strato-Lab V reached maximum elevation of 113740 ft at 9:47 am, where the temperature was -29 °C and the air pressure was .09 psi. At that altitude without a space suit, a person would lose consciousness in seconds. The May 4 flight was the most severe test of the Mark IV suit that was ever conducted.

The flight lasted 9 hours 54 minutes and covered a horizontal distance of 140 mi. As they descended, the balloonists opened their face masks when they reached an elevation where they could breathe. Strato-Lab V landed at 4:02 pm in the Gulf of Mexico. A hovering helicopter lowered a rescue hook (or harness), and although Ross slipped partially out of it, he was able to recover without falling completely into the water. A few minutes later the helicopter returned to retrieve Prather. Prather climbed onto the rescue hook but was unable to secure himself. When the helicopter jerked upwards, he slipped off into the ocean. His flight suit then flooded, and he drowned before Navy divers could rescue him. Prather's body was never recovered.

After the flight
Shortly after Prather's death, President John F. Kennedy phoned Prather's widow, Virginia Merritt, and she arrived at the White House with her children, Marla Lee Prather and Victor A. Prather III. Kennedy posthumously awarded Victor Prather the Navy Distinguished Flying Cross for 'heroism and extraordinary achievement'. The balloonists were also awarded the 1961 Harmon Trophy for Aeronauts. The altitude record for a manned balloon flight set by Prather and Ross in 1961 is still officially recognized as unbeaten by Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. The only other people in history to travel further into the stratosphere were Nicholas Piantanida (USA), who is claimed to have reached 123,800 feet (37,643 m) with his Strato Jump II balloon on February 2, 1966, and Felix Baumgartner, who has reached 128,100 feet (39 044.88 meters) on 14 October 2012 as part of the Red Bull Stratos project.