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Santa Tracker

Re: Santa Tracker

At last check, he was over Laos and Cambodia going into Southern China. I already showed this site to one woman at work who will show it to her four year old daughter. I do this every year, show my friend's daughters this site, they get all excited.
 
Re: Santa Tracker

Every Christmas I always am reminded of these fun facts about Santa and his ability to deliver gifts in one night:

No known species of reindeer can fly. But with 300,000 species of living organisms (mostly insects and bacteria) yet to be classified, flying reindeer – which only Santa has seen – cannot be ruled out.

There are two billion children in the world. But since Santa doesn’t appear to handle Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish children, his workload drops to only 378 million, or a mere 91.8 million homes averaging 3.5 children each, assuming that at least one has been good.

Thanks to time zones and the rotation of the earth, Santa’s Christmas day lasts for 31 hours if he travels east to west, and visits 822.6 homes per second. This gives him 1/1000th of a second to park, race down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining gifts under the tree, eat the snacks, climb up the chimney and into the sleigh and fly to the next house. Assuming the houses are all the same distance apart – 0.78 miles – the total trip will be 75.5 million miles, plus bathroom stops.

So our jolly old friend is travelling at 650 miles per second, or 3,000 times the speed of sound. For comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe saunters along at a poky 27.4 mps and the average reindeer runs at 15 mph.

The sleigh’s payload adds another factor to the equation. Assuming that each child’s gift weighs only 2 pounds, the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, plus Santa, who is always depicted as obese. On land, conventional reindeer can only haul 300 pounds, so if a flying reindeer can pull ten times as much, eight or nine will not cope. We now need 214 000 of them, which adds another 353 430 tons to the weight.

Here’s where it gets juicy (literally)…

675,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates massive air-resistance, like that of a space probe re-entering the atmosphere. Rudolph, who leads the pack, will face friction that generates 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. Per second! In fact he will explode instantaneously, exposing the next reindeer to the same experience. These explosions will cause deafening sonic booms as the whole team is vaporised in less than five thousandths of a second. Santa will also experience 17,500 G-forces, which will pin him to his seat with 4,315,000 pounds of pressure. This will unavoidably mean that the maiden flight of Santa’s sleigh will also be his last.

Yes, there was a Santa, but now he’s dead.
 
Re: Santa Tracker

Proud2baLaker said:
Every Christmas I always am reminded of these fun facts about Santa and his ability to deliver gifts in one night:

No known species of reindeer can fly. But with 300,000 species of living organisms (mostly insects and bacteria) yet to be classified, flying reindeer – which only Santa has seen – cannot be ruled out.

There are two billion children in the world. But since Santa doesn’t appear to handle Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist and Jewish children, his workload drops to only 378 million, or a mere 91.8 million homes averaging 3.5 children each, assuming that at least one has been good.

Thanks to time zones and the rotation of the earth, Santa’s Christmas day lasts for 31 hours if he travels east to west, and visits 822.6 homes per second. This gives him 1/1000th of a second to park, race down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining gifts under the tree, eat the snacks, climb up the chimney and into the sleigh and fly to the next house. Assuming the houses are all the same distance apart – 0.78 miles – the total trip will be 75.5 million miles, plus bathroom stops.

So our jolly old friend is travelling at 650 miles per second, or 3,000 times the speed of sound. For comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe saunters along at a poky 27.4 mps and the average reindeer runs at 15 mph.

The sleigh’s payload adds another factor to the equation. Assuming that each child’s gift weighs only 2 pounds, the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, plus Santa, who is always depicted as obese. On land, conventional reindeer can only haul 300 pounds, so if a flying reindeer can pull ten times as much, eight or nine will not cope. We now need 214 000 of them, which adds another 353 430 tons to the weight.

Here’s where it gets juicy (literally)…

675,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates massive air-resistance, like that of a space probe re-entering the atmosphere. Rudolph, who leads the pack, will face friction that generates 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. Per second! In fact he will explode instantaneously, exposing the next reindeer to the same experience. These explosions will cause deafening sonic booms as the whole team is vaporised in less than five thousandths of a second. Santa will also experience 17,500 G-forces, which will pin him to his seat with 4,315,000 pounds of pressure. This will unavoidably mean that the maiden flight of Santa’s sleigh will also be his last.

Yes, there was a Santa, but now he’s dead.
Click to expand...
This of course is all assuming that Santa doesn't have some sort of device or magic that slows down time everywhere else except right where he's at. Heck, the man has flying reindeer that really don't appear to be all that aerodynamic at all to me, so I don't think we can really rule out the use of some pretty heavy duty magic here. ;)
 
Re: Santa Tracker

I'm waiting for a Satan tracker. I think he's currently bewitching Hokydad's dictionary.
 
Re: Santa Tracker

Q: What's the difference between Santa Claus and Tiger Woods?

A: Santa only comes once a year.




:D :D :D :D :D
 
Re: Santa Tracker

bigmrg74 said:
This of course is all assuming that Santa doesn't have some sort of device or magic that slows down time everywhere else except right where he's at. Heck, the man has flying reindeer that really don't appear to be all that aerodynamic at all to me, so I don't think we can really rule out the use of some pretty heavy duty magic here. ;)
Click to expand...

"Oh, man, he had some magic dust."
"Magic dust?"
"Yeah! Magic dust. He'd give a little to the reindeer, a little to Santa Claus, a little bit more to Santa Claus..."
"And this would get the reindeer off?"
"Get them off? Are you kidding? They flew all the way around the world!"
 
Re: Santa Tracker

Priceless said:
"Oh, man, he had some magic dust."
"Magic dust?"
"Yeah! Magic dust. He'd give a little to the reindeer, a little to Santa Claus, a little bit more to Santa Claus..."
"And this would get the reindeer off?"
"Get them off? Are you kidding? They flew all the way around the world!"
Click to expand...

Yeah, Magic Dust, yeah.;)

Over Ukraine right now.
 
Re: Santa Tracker

Just heard a piece on NPR about this. I see it every year, but never knew that the NORAD schtick started by accident. Apparently ~50 years ago there was a service that would let children call to "talk to Santa." In one of the ads, they printed the wrong phone number, and a colonel at NORAD started getting calls. He played along, and the next year, NORAD started doing their own tracking.

Should cross-post that in the Oil for the Gears thread...
 
Re: Santa Tracker

LynahFan said:
Just heard a piece on NPR about this. I see it every year, but never knew that the NORAD schtick started by accident. Apparently ~50 years ago there was a service that would let children call to "talk to Santa." In one of the ads, they printed the wrong phone number, and a colonel at NORAD started getting calls. He played along, and the next year, NORAD started doing their own tracking.

Should cross-post that in the Oil for the Gears thread...
Click to expand...
Yeah, thats how they started doing this. No worries though, the guys at NORAD all donate their time to the Santa Tracking program. Well, probably all thoses except for those in the Star Gate Command there. ;) :D
 
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