Victor Prather

Lt. Cdr. 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.

Life

Prather was born on June 4, 1923, to Victor Prather Sr. and Gladys May Furse in Lapeer, Michigan. 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, he rejoined the United States Navy. He worked as a surgeon aboard the aircraft carrier USS Shangri-La (CV-38) 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, he 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, Victor Prather, along with Cdr. Malcolm Ross, ascended from the flight deck of the USS Antietam (CV-36) to an altitude of 113,720 feet (34,668 meters) in a Stratolab gondola under a large plastic balloon. [http://www.newscientist.com/backpage.ns?id=mg19125622.400] Ross and Prather were wearing the Navy's Mark IV full-pressure suit. The gondola was protected by venetian blinds, but otherwise open to space. At convert|10|Mcuft|m3, the balloon envelope was the largest ever launched, expanding to convert|300|ft|m in diameter when fully inflated. [http://web.mac.com/bemidji2/iWeb/Site/About%20Man%20High/F5C72A92-F4FA-4C00-BCED-9F4D8A5B5F69.html]

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 pounds. 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 −70 °C (−94 °F) and an air pressure below 0.1 pound per square inch (700 Pa). Their weights were doubled by their gear, restraining movement. The May 4 flight was the most severe test of the Mark IV suit that was ever conducted. [http://www.history.navy.mil/download/space-11.PDF]

The flight lasted 9 hours 54 minutes and covered a horizontal distance of convert|140|mi|km. [http://www.ballong.org/peter/jesper/cia/report.php?period=07&title=Part%207,%] The balloonists opened their face masks after they descended to an elevation where they could breath. After descending, the gondola containing the two balloonists landed in the Gulf of Mexico. The wind caught their parachute and started to drag the gondola until Malcolm Ross was able to use his knife to cut the parachute loose. A hovering helicopter lowered a rescue hook (or harness), and although Ross slipped partially out of it, he was able to recover before 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, so when the helicopter jerked upwards, he slipped off into the ocean, where his flight suit flooded, and he drowned before Navy divers could rescue him.

After the jump

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. [http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10C17F83B5E107B8EDDA00994D8415B828AF1D3] As of 2008, the 1961 altitude record for a manned balloon flight has not been broken.

ee also

*Flight altitude record
*Manned balloon altitude records
*Malcolm Ross

References

*"Balloon Ride to the Edge of Space", by Malcolm Ross and Walter Edwards, National Geographic Magazine, November 1961
*"Disasters and Accidents in Manned Space Flight", by David J. Shayler, Springer-Verlag, 2007, ISBN 1852332255
*"The Pre-Astronauts: Manned Ballooning on the Threshold of Space", by Craig Ryan, US Naval Institute Press, 1995, ISBN 1557507325