Hacker Cinema
The Six Million Dollar Man
1974 · TV series · 5 seasons
Created by Kenneth Johnson, Martin Caidin
Science FictionFantasyActionAdventureDrama
Follow the adventures of Steve Austin, cybernetically enhanced astronaut turned secret agent, employed by the OSI, under the command of Oscar Goldman and supervised by the scientist who created his cybernetics, Rudy Wells. Steve uses the superior strength and speed provided by his bionic arm and legs, and the enhanced vision provided by his artificial eye, to fight enemy agents, aliens, mad scientists, and a wide variety of other villains.
3 positive7 neutralfrom 10 commenters
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11 comments on Hacker News
My favorite Six Million Dollar Man episode is where Steve Austin had to fight a Soviet Venus rover that accidently landed on Earth. It was autonomous, obviously, and because it was designed to survive on Venus, it was nearly indestructible.
No one comes up with plots like that anymore!
Childhood me hopes this will play out exactly like the Six Million Dollar Man episode. That it will roam around terrorizing rural California, and we’ll have to team up with a pretty young Russian scientist and Bigfoot to stop it.
I wonder if the producers of that show knew about that failed mission, and that this was actually really in earth orbit, when they wrote that episode.
Those of a certain age will remember this as the premise of the Six Million Dollar Man episode Death Probe (S4E13).
The TV show was The Six Million Dollar Man.
It reminds me of the space craft that inspired the crash at the beginning of each episode of "The Six Million Dollar Man" - https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/crash-made-famous-tv
I’m curious what the generational divide is for this. I’m 57, love tech and enjoy the positive side of the internet in limited doses. But I find most social media boring.
There is incredible and AMAZING art, accidental moments, serious discussion and fascinating analysis of the world to be found online. But without grounding myself in genuine experience in the stinky, cruel real world of human interaction, nature, and emotions it’s hollow. It only has meaning with this grounding reality.
Infinite scroll has never captured my attention beyond a few seconds. I can’t determine if I’m an anomaly? Normal for my age group?
I’m distressed about how much time my 24 year-old daughter spends on instagram. She lives at home, works as a dance instructor, and spends most of her time staring at her phone screen.
As a child I loved television. The six million dollar man was a highlight of the week (unless a spaghetti western was on). But it quickly became stultifying garbage when I spent more than a couple hours on the screen.
Am I just not normal? I love the grittiness and dangerous unpredictability of the real world. Yet love movies. I’m not sure what to think
Every faithful watcher of the Six Million Dollar Man series in 1977 and 1978 had at least some awareness of the Soviet Venus probe program. A two-part episode in 1977, and another two-parter in 1978 featured the so-called "Death Probe", a Soviet-made Venus probe which was (accidentally in 1977, and intentionally in 1978) unleashed on Earth instead, autonomously fulfilling its mission to "explore" its environs through various acts of violence and destruction supposedly suited for the hostile terrain of Venus. Because the probe was designed to operate on the surface of Venus, it was nearly indestructible.
It's kind of a silly premise, but this was the single most memorable antagonist for Steve Austin from my childhood viewing of the show. And...I don't remember how I knew this, or how much it was discussed in connection with the show, but I knew that there really were Soviet Venus surface probes that this story was (very loosely) based on.
I saw Lee Majors crash one of those at the beginning of each episode of the "Six Million Dollar Man" [1] in the early to mid '70s. Lifting bodies are a cool idea but with inflation, can we afford to rebuild the people that crash them?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoLs0V8T5AA
Wasn’t this an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man? As I recall, it was a fake product even there.
Some other interesting moments of aeronautical derring-do:
Imagine piloting an unpowered aircraft with no wings which could best be described as a "flying bathtub" and by "flying" what is meant is "falling". This is the M2-F{1,2,3}, designed to test lifting body aerodynamics and unpowered landings, much of this research helped in the design of the shuttle orbiter. But in 1967 pilot Bruce Peterson was involved in a spectacular crash that was later used in the opening of the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man, he survived: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jvGJhJINlc
Also consider the X-15. Unlike the SR-71 the X-15 didn't cruise around at high speeds it just accelerated to very high speeds using a rocket engine and then glided. These aircraft, dropped off the wing of a B-52, these aircraft would eventually travel up to nearly mach 7 and over 100 km altitude. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15
Also it's worth considering that the Space Ship One rocket powered sub-orbital space plane gets up to around mach 3 on ascent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne
Or, consider the Apollo 10 spacecraft, which reentered the Earth's atmosphere at a speed of nearly 40,000 kph after returning from the moon (over ten times the highest recorded speed of the SR-71).
Oh, please.
This was covered extensively in the New York Times, not to mention lots of science magazines.
Find the dozens of NYT articles here:
http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/#/venus+probe
It was so well known that the TV show "The Six Million Dollar Man" had a multi-episode plot arc on the topic.
http://bionic.wikia.com/wiki/Death_Probe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4st0a0gWp0
Being born in the very early 1970s isn't good for much, but reminiscing about 300 baud acoustically coupled modems, and talking about the Soviet space program are two exceptions. ;-)