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% 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 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us
must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and 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 #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount,
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 (the ship).

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft
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.

----------------------------------------------
If life gives you melons, you may be dyslexic.

Nono, Santa can move in time. Do not be limited by our view of things.

"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and
wrong." -- H L Mencken