John Malkovich’s voice and spectacular cadence in your head:
- “It is estimated that Santa’s sleigh weighs 353 thousand tons. So, traveling at 650 miles per second would create such enormous friction that Santa and his reindeer would burst into flames. You understand? Like a meteor entering the atmosphere. This is a scientific fact.”
Funny, but most heat of reentry is caused by generated plasma as opposed to air resistance (though that is also a component). There is an excellent Scott Manley video about this topic