Number of Children
In 2008, there are approximately 6.7 billion people on earth, with 2.4 billion children , with around 650 million being Christian. With an average of 3.5 children per household, we then have 186 million houses around the world that are expecting Santa to show up on Christmas night.
Time Available
Santa Claus has to deliver all his presents in about 31 hours, counting the different time-zones, which means he has to visit 1667 houses per second. In about 0.001 second, he has to get to the next house, land on the roof, unhook his safety harness, get out of the sled, find the toy in his huge bag (that is several kilometers high as we’ll see), enters the chimney, place the gifts under the tree, eat the cookies, drink the milk, get up the chimney and get in the sled and tie up his safety harness.
Distance to Cover
With a planet circumference of 40,076 km and with 186 million stops in all countries of the Earth (starting from the Canadian North Pole and excluding Antartica), we can grossly estimate a total travelling distance of 150 million kilometers.
Speed of the Sled
Since Santa Claus has 31 hours to do 150,000,000 km he then has to travel at almost 5 million Km/h. This does not include any time for the Santa Claus and his reindeers to rest or to take a pee break. Such a speed would create an enormous air resistance which would have to effect to heat up the 2 front reindeers. Actually, they would heat up so much, they would be vaporized within the first 0.001 second. The acceleration would be about 20,000 G, which would instantly liquify Santa Claus and his jolly reindeers. The air resistance would then affect the second pair of reindeer in line, vaporizing them. Within 4 thoussandth of a second, the whole gang, including Santa, would be vaporized.
Weight of the load
Assuming an average weight per gift of 2 pound and an average dimensions per gift of 1foot x 1foot x 1foot, the weight of the sled would be about 1,300,000,000 pounds or 589,670,081 kg.
Size of the load
Assuming a cargo area of 6 feet wide x 4 feet long, the height of the sled load would be : 27,083,333 feet or 8,255 Km high. Planes fly to at 30,000 feet or 9 km, so Santa’s sled could hit several planes during his tour.
The Milk & Cookie Situation
During Christmas night, if every house leaves only 1 cookie for Santa, this means a total of almost 2 million Kilos of cookies (based on a 10g cookie) and 18.7 million liters of milk (based on 0.1 liter per glass)! I assume he would have to find a washroom once in a while…
Protective Gears Required
- He would have to have a extremely good collision avoidance system to drive at that speed.
- He would have to wear fantastic goggles too, since the speed of the wind in his eyes (4,838,710 Km/h) would be intolerable.
- A powerful safety harness would be required for the quick turns and abrupt deccelaration.
- They would wear kevlar/carbon microfiber blend body armours, to prevent such appaling scene.
- In order to drink 2 cookies and eat a glass of milk at each stop (in less that 0.0003 second), Santa Claus would have to have a special titanium alloy digestive system.
- He would also have to have a special skin and skelettal structure to withstand such speed.
- The sled would also be equipped with radar deflector and stealth external structure, to avoid being detected by radar from NORAD.
- They would have to be protected by a strong force field (which has not been invented yet).
Ahhh, the magic of Christmas!
Based on an ideas, assumptions and base calculations of my friend, Frankie The Lone Ranger