“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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