Sunday 18 February 2024

$6 Billion Dollar Man For $350k

In the Six Billion Dollar Man, Steve Austin, an Air Force pilot, gets injured in a plane crash and loses his two legs, right arm, and left eye.
Under the tag-line 'We can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better, stronger, faster', the government gives him bionic limbs and a left eye but Steve has to pay the $6,000,000,000 bill for his new limbs, so he agrees to work for a secret agency and would spend the next 60 minutes catching criminals with his superhuman strength, speed and vision.
As the TV series was from the 70's, i assume the £6 billion price tag was about right 40 years ago but i wonder if we have the technology available today to give the recipient the superhuman strength, speed and vision and how much would it cost?
First is the bionic eye and for $30,000 you can buy an artificial eye which has 460 million photo-receptors in the retina which is 46 times more than the 10 million in our 'normal' eyes which would not only result in a much higher resolution image but also includes a x2 zoom feature which with the increased resolution would keep the image clear.
An artificial arm costs $80,000 and while they are they are stronger and can lift much more than human arms, they are 'attached' to the body are so are constrained to the amount of weight it can lift unless some serious reinforcement all over the body to spread the stress.
As Austin had 2 bionic legs, the bill would be $120,000 each so $240,000 but as for super-speed to chase down the bad guys, no artificial legs have been able to outperform the human legs for speed, the Olympic record for 'normal' legs is 9.58 seconds while for the T43 double leg amputations classification at the Paralympics, the record is 10.9 seconds.
As for a bionic man in the style of Steve Austin, superhuman eye's definitely, superhuman arm strength yes but other body modifications would be needed but unfortunately no superhuman speed from bionic legs but today the bill would be significantly reduced and the programme would have to be renamed the $350,000 man.