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Subject:
From:
Michael Fenner <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
20 Dec 96 14:52:57 EST
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There are a number of frivolous messages appearing on Technet at the moment.
Could the more serious minded especially those Technettersin aerospace, NASA
etc,  please consider and comment on  the following which I found recently. It
may have significant ramifications. 
(Do not show this to tiny children and maybe some grown ups)


FATHER CHRISTMAS: Is there a Santa?

Notes from a lecture by Prof. Barr Von Humbug DFC - (Anti Xmas)

25th December 1996

Although scientific evidence (assessed below) now looks comprehensively against
the existence of Santa Claus, the story will not die.
As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests and with research help from that
renown scientific journal "SPY", we can now discuss the annual scientific
inquiry into Santa Claus.
1. No known species of reindeer can fly, but there are are 300,000 speciesof
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 Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that
reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to the
Population  Reference Bureau. At an average 3.5 children per household, thats
91.8 million homes; one assumes there is 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 at 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that
for  each Christian household with children Santa has 1/1000th of second to
park, 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 onto the next house. Assuming that
each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which
of course they are not), we are talking about 0.78  miles per household, a trip
of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us do once ever 31
hours, plus  feeding the reindeer etc..  This means that Santa's sleigh is
moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes
of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, Ulysses space probe, moves
at a paltry 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer runs at 15 miles per
hour tops.
4.The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each
child gets nothing more than a  medium sized lego set (2 lbs), the sleigh is
carrying 321,800 tons not counting Santa, who invariably is described as
overweight. On land conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300lbs. Even
granting that flying reindeer could pull  ten times the normal amount, he cannot
do the job with eight or nine. He would need 214,200 reindeer. This  increases
the payload, not even counting the weight of the sleigh 353,430 tons. Again for
comparison, this is 4 times  the weight of the QE2.
5. 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in  the same fashion as a space
craft reentering the earths atmosphere; the lead pair of reindeer will absorb
14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second. Each in short, will burst into
flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating
deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team with be vaporised
within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa meanwhile, will be subject to
centrifugal forces 17,500.06    times greater than gravity.  A 250 pound Santa
(maybe to light) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by  4,315,015 pounds
of force.


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