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 ever seen.

There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world.  BUT since Santa doesn’t (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish & Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total- 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau.  At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes.  One presumes that there’s at least one good child in each.

Santa has 31 hours or Christmas to work with.  This is due to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical).  This works out 822.6 visits/second.  That is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has .001 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, 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 our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles/ household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles; not counting stops to do what most of us do at least once every 31 hours, plus eating etc.  So Santa’s sleigh must be moving at 650 miles/second, 3,000 times greater than the speed of sound.  For the purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles/second.  A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles/hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element.  Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (2 lb.), 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 300lb.  Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see #1) can pull 10 TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with 8, or even 9 reindeer.  We need 214,200.  This increases the payload – not counting the weight of the sleigh – 353, 430 tons.  This is four times the weight of the ocean-liner Queen Elizabeth.

353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles/second creates enormous air resistance.  This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering 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 .00426 of a second.  Meanwhile, Santa will be subjected to centrifugal forces conservative in terms of guessing Santa’s weight, would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 lb. Of force.  If Santa ever DID deliver presents of Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.

A Merry Christmas to one and all!!