Contra @fakecollapsedsquid2066’s post regarding the high-end prosthetics industry, @mecha-cyborg-xhxhxhx2066’s quick assessment is largely correct.
The development of the high-end monstergirl, monsterboy, and sex-variant full prosthetic bodies does ultimately result in lower costs for the standard bodies purchased by the middle class and for accessories and general implants available under the North American Cybernetics Subsidy Program. The key here is that these benefits are from the mass production models, and not the custom individual models, such as the gold-plated mecha scorpion body built for Ivanka Trump III.
For the custom models, they just use more material, but for the mass production models, the increase in power requirements and weight requires research into battery and materials technology which eventually filters down into the mainline models.
For example, the DSI6 Fault-Tolerant Power Control System in my body (even though I know neither of you guys have it because I’m way more paranoid than either of you) is actually a derivative of the DSI5X originally developed for the high margin DS-56 Rachnera Special, which was high margin, certainly, but sold 10,000 units, in order to increase its operational time from 76 hours to one week without violating the nuclear materials refined arms control act.
Likewise, the Modular Limb System now so commonly used by firefighters and other emergency personnel on more-or-less standard humanoid bodies was originally developed for the Broseidon Systems T-209, which as anyone on this website will remind you, is widely considered incredibly fetishistic and “deeply unnatural”!
Now of course, a lot of this could maybe come from military research, and there’s some argument whether the wealthy rebuilding themselves as fetishized versions of mythological creatures is really a good use of resources, but honestly I doubt that without it we get the same rate of progress.
@collapsedsquid @xhxhxhx I went to reply to this thread, but when I opened up my draft it was already filled with this discourse from the future.
