Sunday, August 5, 2012

The Reichenbach of Mars solution.


“John Zarrella reports on the Sherlock Holmes of Mars rovers looking for clues to life with elementary science.”
The line was all over the internet today, as a CNN reporter chose Holmes to spice up his story about the Mars rover named Curiosity that NASA has due to land on Mars. The line did suck me into watching the video, in which Sherlock’s name was never mentioned, I will admit. So why is Curiosity the Sherlock Holmes of Mars?
Well, maybe John Zarrella and his people have an “in” with Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss, and are giving us a clue about how Sherlock survived the fall off of that building, as their video is mostly about Curiosity plummeting into Mars from space.
NASA calls their plan for getting Curiosity to survive its own Reichenbach Fall “seven minutes of terror.” If Moffat and Gatiss save Benedict Cumberbatch the same way, here’s what will happen: 
Just after Watson loses sight of Holmes, parachutes deploy for the initial breaking of Holmes’s fall. Thruster rockets then ignite to take care of the rest of his downward momentum (from his coat, I’m guessing). At the point the thruster rockets have Holmes basically hovering a few feet off the pavement, a winch will lower Holmes out of his thruster-coat and deposit him gently on the sidewalk. At this point, ground crew has to replace his coat with a non-thruster model and create the blood pool and all, but that’s mere frosting on the cake. If NASA set this all up for Curiosity years ago, before it took off for Mars, Mycroft surely had the technology by this past January. Done and done.
So happy last day of Sherlock Holmes week, everybody! Start working on those thruster-winch Sherlock coats for Comicon next year!

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