The Reindeer Theory

No known species of reindeer can fly. But 300,000 species of living organisms have yet to be classified. Though most of those are insects and germs, that does not "completely" rule out flying reindeer, which only Santa has ever seen.The world has about 2 billion children. But since Santa doesn't appear to visit Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist children, his workload is reduced to 15 percent of the total - 378 million youngsters. At an average rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. Let us presume at least one good child lives in each.Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of Earth. That works out to 822.6 visits per second. Thus, for each household, with good children that Santa visits, he has 1/1000 of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, place the other presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, hop into his sleigh and move on to the next house.Given those 91.8 million homes, we are talking .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting what most of us have to do every day - eating, brushing our teeth, etc. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, or 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest vehicle on Earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at 27.3 miles per second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.Now, let's consider the payload on the sleigh. 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, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" can pull ten times the weight conventional reindeer can pull we cannot do the job with eight reindeer, even if Rudolph is thrown in. We need 214,000 reindeer. That increases the weight of the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison, that burden is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the woman).Now, 353,430 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance, thus heating the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering Earth's atmosphere is heated. The lead pair will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. Per second. EACH.In short, the lead pair will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and will create a deafening sonic boom in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to a centrifugal force 17,500.6 times great than gravity. A Santa that weighs 250 pounds (a conservative estimate) 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.