Dr. Pollard was a research physician with Project Strato-Lab which was a high-altitude manned balloon program 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.
During his naval career, Dr. Pollard made significant contributions to the following: the high-altitude balloon flight series known as STRATOLAB, which set a world altitude record of nearly 114,000 feet using life support systems and medical monitoring provided by the Navy; the selection of the three Navy and one Marine Corps Mercury astronauts of the original seven and their training in meeting the stresses of space flight; the space flight experiments, in cooperation with the Army, of squirrel monkeys Old Reliable, Able and Baker; the national effort in bioastronautics as it progressed in the 1960's by providing Navy scientists' technology and facilities to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and serving as the Navy's member on various committees of the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council. He was for several years the Director, Astronautical Medicine Division for the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery.
