Santa’s Secret Weapon — Reindeer Math

This Kris Kristofferson(?) Kringle fellow manages to pull off some pretty impressive shit right? When was the last time you flew around the world in under 24 hours while stopping at every single house along the way, presumably for more than a few minutes at the naughty one’s homes #CreepyWink. This full-figured philanthroper must be packing some serious horsepower to pull of such a feat. The only real question is, how much? And that kids, is the beginning of a story about how we at MUI lost an afternoon.

Let’s start with the basics, Santa’s rig. It consists of the following components:

1. Santa: A plump man by all accounts. So plump that his belly jiggles like a bowl full of jelly when he laughs but not plump enough that skin is stretched so tight that it hits that terrifying point where it feels rock hard. We’ll call him a cool 250lbs.
2. The Sleigh: Coined the Kringle Kutter and carved from a single 4000 year old redwood by the ageless senior elf. It features two smooth lines, solid curves, velvety interior, two cup holders, and has been retrofit with Sirius XM. All this weighs in at 1,232lbs.
3. The reindeer: A special breed of the North’s own creation. These bad boys are genetically engineered for power and flight. They come in slightly heavier than the typical reindeer at 700lbs which seems a fair trade-off given their power output and also the ability to fly.

Now let’s take a gander at the mission.

1. Travel around the globe. Roughly 24,901 mi (about 200,375,000 twizzlers) in circumference.
2. Stop at all the houses of good children. Maybe some naughty parents places. We’ll see.
3. Carry a shit load of presents.
4. Eat a mountain of cookies
5. Guzzle a couple Holstein’s worth of milk

Super cruise

Santa’s going to have to cover some distance. If we were to fly the 24,901 miles around the equator in 31 hours, thank you timezones, we’d need to travel at 803.3 mph. But if only it were that simple. Unfortunately he needs to make some stops to bang a single mom or two drop off a present or two billion. Like any overly efficient delivery man, Santa spends the majority of his time dropping off packages, if you know what we mean, instead of spending his time in transit. Exactly 32.427% of his time in transit and 67.573% delivering presents. The elves keep track of the sleigh incase Santa stops at a bar and tries to ruin Christmas. This tells us that he spends 10hrs traveling and 21hrs delivering presents. Now we need to know how many kids get presents. And the MUI Santa isn’t some asshole that only delivers to kids of a specific religious persuasion.

7.8B people *29.3% under 18 * 40% (% of kids that aren’t dicks) =914M kids

Fortunately most parents have more than one kid, 2.7 to be more exact. Little sev is a bit messed up but they still love him. Anyway, that means Santa only needs to stop at 338.5M houses.

Given the 21 hour window, Santa needs to make 4,478 stops a second or 223 microseconds per stop. Easy peasy, Santa sleazy. But how far is this mofo gonna travel. Well in addition to getting all the way around the globe, he has to travel to all these houses. Let’s just say that in addition to traveling all the way around the globe the houses are spaced out about 1000ft apart on average. Neighborhoods are closer, farms are further apart, and some people are crazy enough to live in apartment buildings.

338.5M houses *1000 ft apart = 338.5B ft traveled =64M miles

This now gives our hefty friend an average travel speed of

64Mmiles / 10 hours =6,400,000 mph

Perfectly reasonable.

Some Kickass Reindeer

Gross take-off weight sans presents comes out to:

1232lb sleigh + 250lb fat man +8 *700lb reindeer =7,082lbs

Given the terrible aerodynamics of your average reindeer and an open-walled, seatbeltless sleigh, Santa comes in at requiring a 1:2 thrust to weight ratio. Knowing this jolly bastards thrust and earth-shattering speed, we can calculate the average horsepower of a reindeer… before presents.

7,082lb sleigh *0.5 thrust to weight *6,400,000 mph / 375 mile-pounds per hour = 60,433,066 hp

60,433,066 hp / 8 reindeer =7,554,133 hp per reindeer

A 7.6 million horsepower reindeer is nothing to laugh at. Especially considering that combined they generate about 60% more power than the space shuttle did. Probably why the space shuttle isn’t flying anymore but Santa’s still cruising around. But wait. There’s more.

Living in the Present

This capeless crusader isn’t just cruising around racing space shuttles for no reason. He’s got a job to do and that job is to transport cheap plastic things from China to living rooms around the world. Turns out that literal mountain of gifts starts to add weight to that finely crafted cruise missile. How much weight? Back to the math mobile:

914M gremlins * 4 lbs / kid = 3.7B lbs =1.85M tons

Some exec in China got a bonus this year.

But wait a sec. That horsepower calculation was based on the weight of the sleigh wasn’t it. Right you are Jimbo. Let’s add this gift goliath to the pile.

(7,082lb sleigh +3.7B lbs presents) *0.5 thrust to weight = 1,850,003,541 ft.lbs of thrust

1,850,003,541 thrust *6,400,000 mph / 375 mile pounds per hour = 31,573B hp

31,573B hp / 8 reindeer = 3,947B hp per reindeer

Now we’re talking. Each one of those carrot crunchers is cranking out the equivalent of 127,323 space shuttles worth of power per reindeer.

Reindeer Modifications

Seem unrealistic? Only to the feeble minds outside of the visionary MUI corporation. Over here, we’re fully aware that the maniac up at the north pole put his army of slave elves to work genetically engineer reindeer not only for power and flight but also to create fur that acts as heat shielding, collapsable antlers to reduce drag, and a shit targeting system just for dealing with Santa’s enemies. It’s all fun and games until a reindeer turd busts through your windshield like a meteorite instantly disintegrating the entire car.

Moral of the story, he sees you when your sleeping and he knows if you’ve been naughty or nice…

XOXO

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