Santa Claus speed/altitude for Christmas

[UAL744 17]

Hi all. In the spirit of Christmas I figured I’d ask the members here who are pilots and ones who believe in Saint Nick;

in your opinion, on Christmas Eve what speed/Mach, and altitude do you think Santa Claus flies at to get to over 6 billion houses in just 24 hours?

I myself have wondered this myself every Christmas since I started my flight training. And it’s mystified me a lot. Merry Christmas everyone!

 

[Gary1124 181]

He would need warp capability to get to all the homes on his list and still not be able to do it even allowing as little as a second for each stop.

Assuming he at minimum he only visits homes celebrating Christmas, for which the best guess would be Christian cultured people, he would need to visit 2 billion homes. Allowing a second for each stop he would need 5,555,555 hours for just his gift drop offs. Which would mean even if he had warp travel or beam transport he still wouldn't be able to carry it off in a single night.

Edited December 7, 2021 by Gary1124

[UAL744 17]

On 12/7/2021 at 10:58 AM, Gary1124 said:

He would need warp capability to get to all the homes on his list and still not be able to do it even allowing as little as a second for each stop.

Assuming he at minimum he only visits homes celebrating Christmas, for which the best guess would be Christian cultured people, he would need to visit 2 billion homes. Allowing a second for each stop he would need 5,555,555 hours for just his gift drop offs. Which would mean even if he had warp travel or beam transport he still wouldn't be able to carry it off in a single night.

Warp speed? Someone told me he’d need at least Mach 1.4 and cruise at 45,000 ft. 

[Gary1124 181]

The Concorde was a bit faster and needed 4 hours to cross the Atlantic. And Santa would have to span the America's, Europe, Australia, China etc. Mach 1.4 would be a crawl for all that.

[COBS 25]

For a car you have a motor mechanic .

For an Aircraft you have a aircraft mechanic .

For a Sleigh you have a Quantum Mechanic .

Speed takes time to get to different places , but in the Quantum world you can be at many places at the same time or instant ,now you know why Santa's beard is white .

Cheers Karol

[UAL744 17]

On 12/17/2021 at 3:36 AM, COBS said:

For a car you have a motor mechanic .

For an Aircraft you have a aircraft mechanic .

For a Sleigh you have a Quantum Mechanic .

Speed takes time to get to different places , but in the Quantum world you can be at many places at the same time or instant ,now you know why Santa's beard is white .

Cheers Karol

What color do you think it was before it turned white?

[Gary1124 181]

1 hour ago, UAL744 said:

What color do you think it was before it turned white?

It was red. You have seen Santa Clause is Coming To Town haven't you?

[UAL744 17]

9 hours ago, Gary1124 said:

It was red. You have seen Santa Clause is Coming To Town haven't you?

Maybe once, but I was only 18 months old back then, so that memory is a bit fuzzy. Up till now, aside from the ‘60s Rudolph the red nosed reindeer and frosty the snowman movies, the only Christmas movie I have really seen all my life is Jim Carey the grinch, primarily because he is so funny in that. And for some reason, even now, the cat attack parts always make me laugh! 

[AerOdyssey 240]

🙂 

[stans 702]

An opposing view of the very existence of Santa Claus:

From:  https://www.reliableplant.com/Read/14968/existence-of-santa-claus-–-an-opposing-view

In essence, Bah!  Humbug.

The existence of Santa Claus – an opposing view

Is Santa Claus real? Engineer Linda Harden posits that engineering and physics make it a scientific impossibility for Santa Claus to perform the tasks that he purportedly does every Christmas Eve. Perhaps Linda had a bad experience with Old Saint Nick in her past. She doesn’t say. However, she makes her case by calling on five pieces of evidence. Her points are as follows:

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 ever seen.

2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. But, since Santa doesn’t (appear to) handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15 percent 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 there’s at least one good child in each.

3. 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 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, 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 per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. 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 poky 27.4 miles per second – a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4. The payload on the sleigh 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 No. 1) could pull 10 times the normal anoint, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload – not even counting the weight of the sleigh – to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison – this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth ship.

5. A total of 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts 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 gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion, if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.

😁

[UAL744 17]

9 hours ago, stans said:

An opposing view of the very existence of Santa Claus:

From:  https://www.reliableplant.com/Read/14968/existence-of-santa-claus-–-an-opposing-view

In essence, Bah!  Humbug.

The existence of Santa Claus – an opposing view

Is Santa Claus real? Engineer Linda Harden posits that engineering and physics make it a scientific impossibility for Santa Claus to perform the tasks that he purportedly does every Christmas Eve. Perhaps Linda had a bad experience with Old Saint Nick in her past. She doesn’t say. However, she makes her case by calling on five pieces of evidence. Her points are as follows:

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 ever seen.

2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. But, since Santa doesn’t (appear to) handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15 percent 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 there’s at least one good child in each.

3. 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 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, 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 per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. 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 poky 27.4 miles per second – a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4. The payload on the sleigh 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 No. 1) could pull 10 times the normal anoint, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload – not even counting the weight of the sleigh – to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison – this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth ship.

5. A total of 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts 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 gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

In conclusion, if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.

😁

Wow. I never knew how much went into his flights every Christmas Eve. I mean, sure, I got a taste of it watching The Polar Express growing up, but I didn’t think of that much!

And 650 miles a second, that’s faster than even the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. And here I though that chunk of rock was fast, streaming in at 40,000 mph and hitting the Yucatán peninsula.

I never knew how many tons he’d be carrying. Mind blown…!

[stans 702]

Physics doesn't lie.  Now, let me get back to my work on anti-gravity suits and time travel machines.

[dmwalker 601]

Obviously, he has a whole fleet of robotic sleighs.

[UAL744 17]

19 hours ago, dmwalker said:

Obviously, he has a whole fleet of robotic sleighs.

How robotic?

[dmwalker 601]

1 hour ago, UAL744 said:

How robotic?

You'll have to ask Santa. I've already said too much.