But, you might be asking yourself, "What in the hell was anyone even thinking trying to stick a radioisotope generator into a human being's chest cavity?"

Fair question. If you take the goal for an artificial heart to be the true replacement of the human heart in perpetuity, then power becomes a primary concern, trumping all other engineering constraints. When contractors like Westinghouse Electric and McDonnell-Douglas offered bids for the government work, they made sure to note the atomic solution as the only possibility.

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