1.
No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are 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 seen.
2. There are 2 billion children (under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, that reduces the workload to around 15% of the total - 378 million or so. At the reported census average of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.
3.
Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with thanks to time zones and the
rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west. This
works out to 822.6 visits per second. That is to say that for
each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second
to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings,
distribute the remaining gifts under the tree, eat the snacks, get back
up the chimney, get back in the sleigh, and move on to the next house.
Assuming that each of these 91.8 million homes are distributed evenly (which
we know to be false but for the sake of these calculations we will accept)
we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75 1/2
million miles, not counting bathroom stops. This means Santa's
sleigh is travelling at 650 miles per second. 3000 times the
speed of sound. For comparison, the fastest man made vehicle,
the Ulysses space probe moves at a poky 27.4 Miles Per Second the
average reindeer runs at 15 Miles Per Hour.
4.
The sleigh's payload adds another interesting element. Assuming that each
child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh
is carrying 321,300 tons not counting Santa, who is invariably described
as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more
than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see
point one) could pull TEN TIMES the usual amount, we cannot do the job
with 8 or even 9. We need 214,000 reindeer. This increases
the weight, not even counting the sleigh, to 353,430 tons.
Again, for comparison this is 4 times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth
2. (the ship, not the monarch).
5. 353,000
tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance.
This will heat the reindeer in the same manner as a space craft re-entering
the Earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb
14.3 QUINTRILLION joules of energy [er second each. In short,
they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the next pair
of reindeer, and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.
The entire team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second.
This is about the time Santa reaches the fifth house on his trip.
6. This is of minimal importance, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,500.06 times the force of gravity. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
7. Conclusion:
There was a Santa, but he's probably dead now.
