Project Strato-Lab
1950s-60s high-altitude manned balloon program sponsored by the U.S. Navy
Project Strato-Lab was a series of high-altitude manned balloon flights sponsored by the United States Navy 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 (United States Navy). 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 plastic film. These balloons were developed during the earlier Projects Helios and Skyhook by Jean Piccard 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.
The public source identifies “Project Strato-Lab” as 1950s-60s high-altitude manned balloon program sponsored by the U.S. Navy. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Project, Strato-Lab and 1950s-60s.
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This entry incorporates text from “Project Strato-Lab” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.