OT - An Engineer's Analysis of Santa ( NASA? )

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There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau).

At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000 the of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 1.255 km per household; a total trip of 121.48 million kilometres, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 1046 km per second- 3,000 times the speed of sound.

For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second in a vacuum, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 30 km per hour. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming a best case scenario that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set and a Game Boy (two kg), the sleigh is carrying over 636 thousand tonnes, not counting Santa himself.

On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 kg. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times that normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even NINE of them-Santa would need 212,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 40,000 tonnes (at an average weight per reindeer of 189 kg), plus harnesses.

Our total mass is now roughly eleven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch). 676,000 tonnes travelling at 1046km per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere.

The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously (unless they were heat shielded with ceramic tiles like the space shuttle, which would protect them for about .001 of a second), exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporised within 4.26 seconds, or right about the time Santa reached the 441st house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 1046km/second in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 100kg Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 1,961,370kg of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a blob of pink goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Merry Christmas All! ... LOL

-- John (jh@NotReal.ca), December 23, 1999

Answers

John,

You did not factor in Santa's "Magic Dust". Did you miss the animated christmas cartoons this year?

-- BiGG (supersite@acronet.net), December 23, 1999.


Bravo, bravo. To the printer it goes.

If you don't mind me asking, are you the author or the cutter and paster?

Either way, Merry Christmas.

-- semper paratus (ho@ho.ho), December 23, 1999.


1) Your analysis missed the energy usage of such a mission. Reindeer are relatively inefficient in converting fodder to energy...the balance of the fodder passes through the reindeer. Therefore, we would be at least a meter deep in reindeer poop come Christmas morning! (Merry Christmas!!)

2) Exploration of the North Pole has not indicated a toy manufacturing plant and residence.

3) All of which means that Santa has no doubt updated his modus operendi and now operates out of a orbital manufacturing plant, and teleports the toys to the kids... (Beam 'em down, Scotty).

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), December 23, 1999.


John, et all, ROTFLMAO!!! Thanks, I NEEDED that!!!

-- Big Frown on (face@untilnow.com), December 23, 1999.

I am just a cut and paste kinda guy ... It was sent to me by my son, who works in a Canadian Government office where it was being passed around. Sorry, author unknown.

-- John (jh@NotReal.ca), December 24, 1999.


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