Santa Claus: An engineer's perspective...

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau).

At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 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 967.7 visits per second.

This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks.

This means 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, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a Poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself.

On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them, Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch), to 600,000 tons.

Traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance-this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

/faceplam.
Want to calculate my planetary interaction system resources for feeding my W.H. POS? if you do - i name my next ship Beliboobs!

Santa operates within a time continuum or bubble where by he has all the time in the world to visit.

Elk! When are you gunna come and play!

Still waiting for Officer update from SOE. Also we got some silly miners on our precious wormhole! Need to deal with them.

I've stopped playing EVE now, got bored station spinning with my head up my arse waiting for skills to train. the rest of the game's so slow paced and meh i couldn't carry on playing.

That sounds rude!

Officer update will come soon(tm), in the mean time, why not enjoy some good old RP!

Only time I'll go back to EVE is when incarna comes out.

To Beli: I just found very interesting article to read. Everything in it, can be applied not only to EVE but to SWG also.
--->READ ME<---

To Jeraan Taruk: Officer update will come soon (tm)...is about a year now. =) The main problem why i am not back in SWG is described in article i just linked. I dont know what to do there. SWG have damn very easy gameplay. I dont see any challenges there. Atleast in EVE i have risk of full drop etc. etc. its also far more ballanced then SWG. In EVE you can be a politician and really lead alot of peoples- not Roleplay politician with 3-5 peoples.
Roleplay is nice - but even in the Best times of SA there was no more then a few hours of *old good RP* each week. Rest of the time i spend mostly grinding for something... I can add few more things, but i dont want to sound very pessimistic =)

Almost forgot. About Incarna.
I still dont think Incarna will be an *Ultimate Solution* but CCP want to release it this summer. 18 January they will add new Character Generator into EVE. This generator will be used in Incarna. Carbon technology looks very promising. =)
From test server:


After that is very hard to look on cardboard cloaks and various clipping stuff.

Weiss Reeno wrote: SWG have damn very easy gameplay. I dont see any challenges there.

You might want to log in and have a try of the game mate, they've updated the witches od dathomir themepark, part of that was updating the npc AI of elite/gold elite nightsisters and SMC, they actually do specials now and some of them even cloak in the middle of fights, it's great fun

I'll admit incarna might not be the ultimate update, however to my mind it will add alot to eve to make it easier to handle. Will also add a whole new social aspect of face to face interaction in the game which I miss.

Over all I think incarna will make eve more accessable and offer more choice, instead of just having to fly.

Also don't forget the possibility of after incarna is out, majority of the design team can be reallocated to Dust.

Beli wrote:

Weiss Reeno wrote: SWG have damn very easy gameplay. I dont see any challenges there.

You might want to log in and have a try of the game mate, they've updated the witches od dathomir themepark, part of that was updating the npc AI of elite/gold elite nightsisters and SMC, they actually do specials now and some of them even cloak in the middle of fights, it's great fun

- Trust me i see SWG every day =) and know alot of what happening there =)
- NPCs now use AI Skillz?! What a progress! Realy? After all this years?! Night sisters AI vs Sleepers, who you bet on? This game need much more changes then adding new themepark. I think return of decay or something else very hardcore may help players like me retun.

It doesn't change the fact that EVE is just plain slow and boring especially when waiting for important skills, i prefer swg as its much faster paced, can't really compare either though to be honest, completely different games.

I just got bored with EVE in 6 months, i'm back in SWG and hooked within a week again even though i have played it on and off for 7yrs, there may not be more to do than EVE, but it FEELS like there's more and whenever i log on i'm not sitting around thinking "what can i do" and opening and closing random windows while i think about it, on SWG i log on and i say "hmn what shall i do first", there's a long list of things i want to do and im working my way through them, that's the main difference to me.

Beli wrote:It doesn't change the fact that EVE is just plain slow and boring especially when waiting for important skills, i prefer swg as its much faster paced, can't really compare either though to be honest, completely different games.

Totaly agree. And i am not talking about what is best EVE or SWG.

I just got bored with EVE in 6 months, i'm back in SWG and hooked within a week again even though i have played it on and off for 7yrs, there may not be more to do than EVE, but it FEELS like there's more and whenever i log on i'm not sitting around thinking "what can i do" and opening and closing random windows while i think about it, on SWG i log on and i say "hmn what shall i do first", there's a long list of things i want to do and im working my way through them, that's the main difference to me.

Same with me in EVE. *What shall i do first?* And same with me in SWG *Hmmm...what to do...?*
P.S. plz lets not start any holywar about what game is better. all i want to say - At this moment of time - EVE is better for me. But i never said that *i will nevah return to SWG*. This time just isnt come yet.

I think the bottom line is that if you care mainly about RP then it#s SWG over EVE all the way. Well you can't RP much in EVE if you actually can't leave the ship, right? Unless you want to RP a living ship lol

Anyway we are soon gonna board our plane back to Poland, keep your fingers crossed for a good flight guys

safe travels mate, and merry christmas all.

Marry Christmas all and Happy New Year! Hug you all! Meawoo you all!



Wish all shit stay in 2010 and y get good presents and will be happy and in love!

Jon-Sohn wrote:Well you can't RP much in EVE if you actually can't leave the ship, right? Unless you want to RP a living ship lol

I am sorry for trolling this forum again with EVE, but i want you to read this: EveNews24



Thanks to polish community!

Santa's sleigh is actually a TARDIS


I'll play Dust for sure when it comes out, but for now I'm waiting to check out TOR (if I ever manage to unbusy myself) good to see you're back though Beli

Salofen Ordon wrote:Santa's sleigh is actually a TARDIS


I'll play Dust for sure when it comes out, but for now I'm waiting to check out TOR (if I ever manage to unbusy myself) good to see you're back though Beli

Tius and Salofen, TRANSFORM! Into ground leadership!