No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are at least 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer, which only Santa has ever seen.
There are approximately 2 billion children (people under 18) in the world. However, since Santa doesn't appear to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total--about 378 million, according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. Let's assume there is at least one good child in each.
Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the Earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical).
This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has about 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh, and move on to the next house.
Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the Earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but for the purposes of these calculations we will accept), we are talking about .78 miles per household, and a total trip of 75 1/2 million miles, not counting of course to stop and do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours.
This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on Earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a ponderous 27.4 miles per second; a conventional reindeer can run 15 miles per hour, tops.
The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (weighing two pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as being overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds.
Even granting that flying reindeer (see point #1) could pull ten times their normal amount of weight, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine of them. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload (not counting the weight of the sleigh) to 353,000 tons. Traveling at 650 miles per second, this mass creates enormous air resistance--the air will heat the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than the gravity of Earth. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
Merry Christmas everyone!
There are approximately 2 billion children (people under 18) in the world. However, since Santa doesn't appear to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total--about 378 million, according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. Let's assume there is at least one good child in each.
Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the Earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical).
This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has about 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh, and move on to the next house.
Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the Earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but for the purposes of these calculations we will accept), we are talking about .78 miles per household, and a total trip of 75 1/2 million miles, not counting of course to stop and do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours.
This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on Earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a ponderous 27.4 miles per second; a conventional reindeer can run 15 miles per hour, tops.
The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (weighing two pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as being overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds.
Even granting that flying reindeer (see point #1) could pull ten times their normal amount of weight, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine of them. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload (not counting the weight of the sleigh) to 353,000 tons. Traveling at 650 miles per second, this mass creates enormous air resistance--the air will heat the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than the gravity of Earth. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
Merry Christmas everyone!
