What was The Six Million Dollar Man's job?

Who can forget the dramatic slow motion action scenes used to indicate how fast Steve Austin could move, in the famous 70's series The Six Million Dollar Man? Accompanied by that distinctive synthesizer clattering sound, the tag line "We can rebuild him" was used in playgrounds the world over.

However, some people are sure he had a different job than the one we see today. They remember him being a jet pilot and not an astronaut, which is reinforced by his title of "Colonel Steve Austin". Looking today, it's clear - right from the voice over in the opening credits - that he ws an astronaut.

There might be an explanation for this confusion. For a start, there's the real world example of Neil Armstrong who was both. The difference here though is there was no memory of the astronaut part of the job, and the into sequence for every episode shows him having the accident whilst piloting an experimental aircraft.

"We have the technology"

The series was adopted for TV in 1973 from the novel Cyborg, by Martin Caidin.

There was a spinoff, The Bionic Woman, which ran from 1976 to 1978.