Victor Prather

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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.

Contents 1 Life 2 Project RAM 3 The flight 4 After the jump

[edit] Life

Prather was born on June 4, 1926, 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.

[edit] Project RAM

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

[edit] The flight

On May 4, 1961, Prather, along with Cdr. Malcolm Ross, ascended to an altitude of 113,720 feet (34,668 meters) in the Stratolab gondola under a large plastic balloon from the USS Antietam (CV-36).[1] They ascended for nine hours, until reaching their record-breaking altitude. They were exposed to temperatures as low as −70 °C (−94 °F) and air pressure below 0.1 pound per square inch (700 Pa). Their weights were doubled by their gear, making movement almost impossible.

They landed in the Gulf of Mexico and were met by a retrieval helicopter with a hanging ladder to be used by the men to climb up to the helicopter. Ross climbed up the ladder to the helicopter first. Prather followed, but he unfortunately slipped off the ladder and fell back into the sea. Prior to ascending the ladder, thinking that he was out of danger, he had opened up the helmet to his flight suit. When he fell back into the water, he could not swim due to the weight of the suit, and a large volume of water came in through the open helmet. He drowned in his suit.

[edit] 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. Her husband was then posthumously awarded the Navy Distinguished Flying Cross for 'heroism and extraordinary achievement'.