Official NORAD Tracks Santa | Hacker News Reader

Official NORAD Tracks Santa

noradsanta.org

179 pointsvoisin45 comments

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Somewhat related: Jeppesen charts for the North Pole and Santa's workshop[1]. Quite hilarious, for anyone familiar with aviation charts!

https://ww2.jeppesen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/north-po...

Thanks for sharing from a recent IRA pilot! I'm surprised they didn't do this as a CAT III ILS. A DA of 250' with Rudolph leaves a lot of margin for Santa to get snowed in.

You're doing a CAT III ILS as a recent IR pilot?! Did you buy a Pilatus?

I'm not doing a CAT III. I'm saying the joke RNAV at the north pole using Rudolph should have been portrayed as a CAT III.

Where did you find this? I thoroughly enjoyed looking over it. Merry Christmas and thanks for sharing.

I saw a screenshot of it on /r/aviation, and I thought I'd find the actual PDF on Jeppesen's website after a Google search.

I can't seem to find anywhere on Jeppesen's website which lists all their commemorative charts, unfortunately. There are some more interesting ones:

- 'Miracle on the Hudson' approach: https://ww2.jeppesen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/us-airwa...

- AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilot Association) 80th anniversary approach: https://ww2.jeppesen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/AOPA-80t...

I had no idea they did this. Thanks!

Merry Christmas, may your celebration of the Savior's birth be a joy filled one!

I don't personally celebrate it, but thanks anyway! I just wish it to others because I know they do. :)

Checkout the scalebar Not to scale

Child calling Santa reached NORAD instead. Christmas was never the same (2018) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29692376 - Dec 2021 (2 comments)

NORAD's Crazy Santa Cause - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16003828 - Dec 2017 (4 comments)

NORAD's Santa Tracker Began with a Typo and a Good Sport (2014) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13094879 - Dec 2016 (16 comments)

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/12/yes-vir...

By now most people are familiar with the origin story (mistyped phone number in an ad for kids to call Santa at Sears). But for this unfamiliar: https://abc7news.com/norad-santa-tracker-christmas/448262/

Curious to listen to this podcast[0], but it seems that that is not true.

[0] https://twitter.com/aaronstein1/status/1606762318397784064?s...

Doesn’t seem this person provides any evidence to the contrary or even believable hearsay to the contrary.

https://gizmodo.com/how-the-u-s-military-turned-santa-claus-...

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/12/yes-vir...

If I post this on Twitter, would my account be suspended?

Very shameful the US government would post Santa's assassination coordinates.

Came to post the same joke, seems like a good meme joke for the holidays?

Kind of cheerless but I enjoyed this Nuclear Weapons Anthropologist's critical take on the NORAD Santa thing.

https://mobile.twitter.com/NuclearAnthro/status/134189570521...

Obivously not directed at you, but I would actually take this as a cynical take, for goodness sake, it was just a happy coincidence that the number was misprinted (which evolved into this, and he didn't dispute this). It seems that he was angry on NORAD (which its merits and dishonors can be discussed endlessly), but I hate the absolutism of his post.

The US military just shifted its bloody campaigns in Afghanistan and Libya to a bloody war against Russia, a focus of its new massive military budget while it cries poverty regarding the needs of even its own workers for domestic programs.

That the Christian holiday is tied into the US military apparatus with its imperial bases and adventures throughout the world is no surprise.

I'm confused, Norad and Google's tracker show completely different positions and even itineraries. Is Santa really twins?

According to the FBI, Nicholas Clause aka Santa has been known to use jamming devices that cause interference when tracking his slave labor based international shipping empire. He also uses numerous decoy sleighs and Santas to obfuscate his true locations as he goes around the world committing criminal trespassing on a scale never before seen in history and often is known to leave a calling card behind in the form of presents and often burgles the homes he trespasses into, with reports stating he often steals various kinds of food as some kind of sick joke. His treatment of the Reindeer endangered species has also been under review.

Consider Nicholas to be extremely dangerous if you or a loved one happen to catch him inside your home this evening.

Please report anything regarding this individual to tips.fbi.gov or by calling 911

Remember, santa is just a catholic saint's name plastered on wodenaz/odin doing product placement for coca-cola, a company that used to give kids cocaine and now offers something arguably more harmful. Woden isn't exactly cuddly. No one ever sees santa, but missing persons spike at the solstice. I'm not saying he takes people who spot him, I'm just saying stay in bed tonight...

The last time NORAD worked together with Google was back in 2011:

https://web.archive.org./web/20120108000436/http://www.usato...

https://web.archive.org/web/20120119095752/http://www.networ...

I've always wondered if Google has ever tried contacting Norad to see about syncing their Santa data. Norad has been doing this longer, so it's always been a minor annoyance that Google's data has to be different.

Santa is also on flightradar24 as SANTA1 [0], and that's not synced with either! Such an annoying mild annoyance...

[0] https://fr24.com/R3DN053/2ea2ef9b

Works surprisingly well on Firefox mobile. Maybe it shouldn't be surprising to me anymore though, sometimes I think of technology problems in the mind frame of when I first encountered the problem, however many years ago that was.

Cool as always. Sadly, super broken on Firefox. the whole view is just a tiny sliver on the left size. Works well on Chrome.

Maybe Santa will deliver a working browser down Mozilla's chimney... ;-)

Some panic last night when Santa was spotted in Greece about 10pm local time

There's a full screen button that improves the situation.

I remember my neighbors dad showing us this on their compaq pc. I can't remember exactly what year it was I would guess it was probably <2004. I think it had a cool 3d visualizer thing with lots of polys but not google earth

Kinda WEIRD that military fighter jets follow Santa around "protecting" him.

https://youtu.be/MU1iptxTbog

Speaking of that, there would be a related prank that could be done in the UK this year, as the ISS would fly straight up the sky the morning of the 25th

You don't anyone getting the wrong ideas there

My teenager just came in and asked me if I'd heard of this before. It was fun to explain the story and bring up the website - I'd forgotten about it.

How is Santa delivering hundreds of thousands of gifts while he is over the middle of a large body of water?

How is Santa over a large body of water in a sleigh pulled by reindeer? Magic my friend.

"North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) "

When will NORAD start celebrating the Great Wiccan Sabbats, including Samhain ?

Should a secular nation's military be promoting one religion's holiday ? Do NORAD do anything similar for Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh, Zoroastrian, Yazidi, or Wiccan celebrations ?

Take this as a positive, rather than a normative, statement: there’s a state religion in the US, and Christmas is one of its holidays. The prime actor in American Christmas is Santa Claus, as made famous by the Coca Cola company in the early 20th century. You can draw some line between the Christian celebration around the 25th and the modern American holiday known as Christmas, but it’s roughly the same relation as the Christian holiday had with its solstice predecessors. Christmas in the 21st century in America is a predominantly commercial affair, any relationship to any prior religious celebrations is largely coincidental at this point.

It that the same tracker they used in Santa's Slay? :) Probably not. )

Not showing travel speed was a missed opportunity

Flightradar24 has flight speed - 727 knots, when I checked last

https://fr24.com/R3DN053/2ea2ef9b

Santa deniers suicidal.

Hope that someone will do that ride for real and be tracked with Starlink satellites triangulations.

Merry Christmas, HN!

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