“Satan’s & Santa’s Pitchfork” © Robert Fleming

 

Santa’s Logistical Challenge

Amateurs talk strategy and professionals talk logistics. Omar Bradley.

Time Challenge
Assume the 9 billion people on Earth live in households of 4 or 5.
This means Santa must visit 2 billion homes in 24 hours.

Time per home = (24 hours x 3600 seconds/hour)/2 billion = 4 x 10-5 seconds/home

If Santa moved 40 feet per home, he’d need a speed of
40 feet/4 x 10-5 seconds = 10,000 feet/second = 6,818 miles per hour

Load Challenge
Assume each person’s presents weigh 1 pound.
Then, Santa must deliver 9 billion pounds (or 4.5 million tons) of presents.
Assuming his sleigh has the cargo capacity of a Boeing 747 (139 tons),
he would need (4.5 million/139) =32,000 loads.

Trips back to the north pole to pick up new loads are impractical.
Assuming a mean distance to the north pole of 6,000 miles
and that nations ban supersonic flight over their territory,
Reload Round Trip Time = 2 x 6000 miles/600 miles per hour = 20 hours.
Even if these trips could be rerouted over oceans and Santa’s sleigh reached Mach 3 like the SR-71 Blackbird, reloading at the north pole would take too much time.

Clearly, forward-deploying gifts in local depots makes more sense.

2023/XII

 

Jon Wesick is a regional editor of the San Diego Poetry Annual. He’s published hundreds of poems and stories in journals such as the Atlanta Review, Berkeley Fiction Review, I-70 Review, Lowestoft Chronicle, New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Paterson Literary Review, Pearl, Pirene’s Fountain, Slipstream, Space and Time, and Underside Stories. His most recent books are The Shaman in the Library and The Prague Deception.

Robert Fleming is a visual poet from Lewes, Delaware, United States. Books include Con-Way in 4 in 1, #4, by Four Feathers Press and White Noir by Devil’s Party Press. Robert is a contributing editor of Old Scratch Press and was shortlisted for 2023 Blood Rag Poet of the year.