Merry Christmas everybody !
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tomthenose
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Artlav
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IronRain
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Merry Christmas to the whole community! 
Codz
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Merry Christmas and happy holidays from the crew of Apollo 8 as of exactly 45 years ago!
Einion Yrth
Hoopy Frood
Consider the following:
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.
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.
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.
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.
paddy2
Addon Developer
Ref Post number 6
Consider the following
1) I got Christmas presents
2) My family was to mean to buy them
3) Thanks Santa
And to you all, I wish you Many Many yo's and all the Ho's you can handle
Consider the following
1) I got Christmas presents
2) My family was to mean to buy them
3) Thanks Santa
And to you all, I wish you Many Many yo's and all the Ho's you can handle
Codz
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It's funny, quite a few people asked me why an atheist would care about Christmas, in all honesty, I just love the eggnog.
That incredibly relevant information aside, happy holidays to all of O-F!
That incredibly relevant information aside, happy holidays to all of O-F!
asbjos
tuanibrO
I thought that Helios 2 was the fastest vehicle ever? Where does someone say that the fastest is Ulysses?
But anyway, merry Christmas to all of you!
Einion Yrth
Hoopy Frood
Winter solstice festivals pre-date christianity by quite some period.It's funny, quite a few people asked me why an atheist would care about Christmas, in all honesty, I just love the eggnog.
Have a cool yule all.
Ghostrider
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Merry Christmas everybody. Never miss a chance to throw a party. 
Last edited:
garyw
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Oh, so the OP wants star wars christmas cards?
challenge accepted.
Merry Christmas all!
challenge accepted.
Merry Christmas all!
Izack
Non sequitur
Happy holidays! May the 
find you all well!
And for those in applicable regions, may you all not find your car buried under a metre of snow, as I did.
Yodaclause posted by none other than Yoda himself. That absolutely made my day.
find you all well!And for those in applicable regions, may you all not find your car buried under a metre of snow, as I did.
Merry Christmas to you all !
Yodaclause posted by none other than Yoda himself. That absolutely made my day.
ADSWNJ
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Tsk, tsk... such a static Newtonian/Einsteinian a treatment, it's quite old-fashioned. Get with the new science dude - Santa figured out quantum states a long time ago, evidenced by the fact that kids and parents knew of Uncertainty Principle long before Heisenberg.
Here's a rigorous proof of Santa as a Macroscopic Quantum Phenomenon to calm the fears of all the Orbiter kids out there:
http://www.markovojinovic.com/professional/pdf/SantaClaus.pdf
Happy holidays! May the
And for those in applicable regions, may you all not find your car buried under a metre of snow, as I did.
Yodaclause posted by none other than Yoda himself. That absolutely made my day.
thought you guys get a kick out of that one
Mojave
60% Ethanol
Merry Christmas.
Fabri91
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Happy holidays, fellow Orbinauts!
