REPORT ------ Subject: Is there a Santa clause? Author: EXTERNAL.MU582475 Date: 09/12/96 15:43 1. No known species of reindeer can fly. But there ARE 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and although 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. But since Santa doesn't seem to help Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total- 378 million children. At an average rate of 3.5 children per household, that means 91.8 million homes to visit. We assume there's at least one good child in each. 3. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, because of time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west. This means 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, jump out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining gifts under the tree, eat the snacks, go back up the chimney, jump back in the sleigh, and travel to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million homes are situated evenly (which we know is false but to make these calculations easier we will accept) we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not including toilet stops. This means that 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-craft moves at a basic 27.4 miles per second; the average reindeer runs at 15 MPH. 4. The sleigh's cargo-load adds another interesting point. Assuming that each child gets no more than a medium sized toy 'Lego-set' (2 pounds weight), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons not including Santa, who is usually described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even if "flying reindeer" (see point one) could pull TEN TIMES the usual weight, we cannot do the job with 8 or even 9 reindeer. we need 214,000 reindeer. This increases the weight, not including the sleigh, to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison this is 4 times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth 2 cruise-ship. 5. 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer in the same way as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 144.3 BILLION joules of energy, each every second. Simply, they will become in flame almost instantaneously, exposing the next pair of reindeer, and creating deafening sonic booms behind them. The entire team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousands of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal G-forces of 17,500 times the pressure of gravity. A 300 pound Santa would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,115 pounds of force. 6.Conclusion: There was a Santa, but he's dead now.