Bionics fact or fiction ?

Is it possible that oneday we will beable to give people bionic strenght like in the movie the Six million dollar man ?

I am not talking about robotic arms i am talking about real looking limbs using prostethics. How will take on the challenge of body mechanics ? to lift heavy weights ?

Thanks,

Cuz

P.S Sorry if i ask so many quesitons i am a crypto science buff

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It's extremely possible for this to occur. We have already developed things such as the Jaws of Life, hand held cranks or vices, etc. To be able to take those simple mechanics and put them into prosthetics is easy enough, it's instead the practicality of it all. If there is little practicality, there is no point in using the money for such inventions.

 

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Lunar you make a great point. However imagine if we could enhance a human beings using bionics and send them on special missions like Steve Austin did in the Six Million Dollar man. Maybe when iraqi soldier gets injured in combat. We could enhance him and send him out to tackle terrorists using his super powers.

This is a very interesting thread i am already excited thanks

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Well...the problem with Steve Austin was that only his arm and legs were bionic...not the rest of his body. If he were to try to pick up a car...or some other feat of super strength, his spine or other non-biotic bones would break.

 

That's entirely true, which I considered while typing my previous post, however, we must look at the psychological aspect of it. If we begin doing that, people will begin to feel invincible, and as MacGuyver said, they are not. Not only this, but people will also begin to succumb to the greed and lust for power. The likely-hood of people starting to injure themselves, just to gain these "super human" appendages would be exponential. So aside from these prosthetics being currently impractical, they will also cause a large upset in the masochism, crime, and death rates, which are already fairly high in all of society.

 

There are already prototypes of Exoskeletal bionics which the military obviously doesn't talk much about (while it might be cool to have something to aid carrying heavy ordnance the practicality as a weapons platform and overall cost is probably why it's still only a prototype)

As for replacing peoples limbs with bionics, well you could merge an Exoskeleton around those parts of the body that aren't replaced like the spine. (So bionic arms and legs, that can connect to an exoskeleton when need be)

One name that would pop to mind (If I had actually known it rather than just a memory of a cameraman with a prosthetic limb) was Mohamed Amin who lost an arm during an explosion. I can roughly remember that he had a customised prosthetic, that actually increased his capability as a a cameraman. In one biography he mentioned how in some places it would be too dangerous to film outside of the car, so he was capable of sticking his arm through the sunroof to film using his arm as a rotating tripod. (He could rotate the hand 360 degs)

Unfortunately for him, his line of work kept him in the most trouble stricken regions of the planet so it was inevitable something would happen. http://www.thebaron.info/mohamedamin.html

My point of bringing him up is it's all well and good to create a limb to replace something you've lost, but the likelihood that is in all practicality you can actually decide to make a "better"(more capable of specific tasks) replacement limb to take the real ones place.

 

Very true the spine may break if he were to lift a car

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If we could enhance human strenght i agree people would get agree. I was watching a small episode of 7 million dollar man when he got excited he got overcome by greed and power and they had to lower his bionic powers down to normal see link below..

 

I wondering if someone lifts a weight how much weight is being applied to the lower back any ideas ?

 

depends on the angle of his arms and body.

 

Someone told me that whatever you lift you are applying 3 times more weight on the lower back. Now if that is correct if i lift a 20 kg weight. My back is actually supporting 60 kg as the lower back is the centre of gravity ?

 

That somebody obviously doesn't have a clue. 20kg's is 20kg's, it doesn't change in weight (At least not within our Earth's field) The only thing you could possible apply to their reasoning was that the overall surface volume that the weight is being distributed too changes throughout the body applying greater force at those points where the area is least(like the lower back), however some of the force is actually absorbed through both muscle and other forms of tissue (Just alone they wouldn't support as much without "squishing")

 

As to the OP's initial Q, this is already in process and there are already augmented bionics in use as replacement limbs. The US military is supporting this and plans to use these augmented devices to allow soldiers with missing limbs to return to combat if they wish.

The back strain question while pertinent is not as serious as one may think. Consider the weight - trainer who has developed huge arms but neglected his/her back muscles. They must take this into consideration when demoing their prowess, I have seen this done for exactly this reason.

I have to remember such when playing with my large dog.

 

Will they give the soldiers super human strenght to fight ?