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.”
The wind resistance shouldn’t be dependant on the mass. Shape of the sleigh would be the real factor.
But another thing to consider is that the gigantic mass and heat capacity. Given that the sleigh has a good heat distribution, it would take a lot of air resistance to actually make the sleigh combust. I don’t have a decent guess for the average heat capacity, so I don’t actually know if it’s significant enough, but the calculation is more complex than just looking at the speed.