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The Annual Aeronautical Engineers Report On The Theory Of St. Nicholas (Santa Claus)

After much research, we present the AAE report on the theory of Santa. No known species of reindeer
can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living oganisms yet to be classified, and while most of
these are insects and germs, this doesn't COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer, which only Santa has seen
There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. But since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle Muslims,Hindu,
Jewish & Buddhist children, that reduces the total to 15% of the total -378 million according to
The Population Reference Bureau.
At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes.
One presumes that there is at least one good child in each home.
Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with. This is due to different time zones and the rotation of the Earth,
assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical).
This works out as 31.6 visits per second.
That is to say for each Christian House with a good children, Santa has 0.01 seconds to park, hop out of his 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 in the sleigh and move on to the house.
Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are venly distributed accross the world (which of course we know
is wrong, but for the purposes of our calculation we will accept) we are now talking about .78 miles per house,
a total trip of 75.5 million miles; not counting what most of us do every 31 hours plus eating etc.
So Santa's sleigh must be moving at around 650miles/second, 3000 times the speed of light.
For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on Earth, The Ullyses space probe,
moves at a pokey 27.4 miles/second.A conventional Reindeer can run tops, 15 miles per hour.
If every one of the 91.8 million households were to leave out one 8 ounce chocolate chip cooke
and a 300ml glass of 2% milk, the total calories (needless to say other vcitamins & minerals)
would be approximately 225 calories. Multiplying the number of calories per house by the number of homes
(225x91800000), we get the total number of calories Santa consumes that night to be 20655000000 calories.
To break it down further, 1 pound is equal to 3500 calories. Dividing our total number of calories by the
number of caloris in a pound (20655000000 / 3500) and we get the number of ponds Santa gains,
5901428.6, which is 321,300 tons.
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets 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 300 lb.
Even granting that 'Flying Reindeer' can pull 10 TIMES the normal amount,
we cannot do the job with 8, or even 9, deer.
We need 214,200. This increases the payload - not counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons.
This is 4 times the weight of the ocean liner Queen Elizebeth.
353,430 tons travelling at 650 miles/second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up
in a fashion similar to a spaceship re-entering the Eath's atmosphere. The lead pair 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 creating deafining
sonic booms in their wake.
The entire reindeer team will be vaporised within .00426 of a second.
Meanwhile, Santa will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity.
a 250 lb Santa, being VERY conservative in terms of guessing his weight, would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by
4,315,015 lb of force.

If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, He's dead now.
A merry Christmas (or Summer) to one and all!!!

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