It's not much consolation, considering how badly 2016 went, and how the outcome of that election has resulted in policy loss (Justice Gorsuch) after policy loss (The Trump Tax Hike), but if we look at the election of 2017 it's difficult not to conclude that Democrats won.
Of course, 2017 wasn't that consequential.
There were local elections, a few dozen special elections, and statewide votes in New Jersey and Virginia. But for the votes that really did matter, Democrats did considerably well.
Let's look at the most important elections of 2017 and how the Democrats did.
1. Alabama Senate special election - While this race won't change control of the Senate, it could after the 2018 election. And Vice President Pence already had to pass 6 tie-breaking votes in the first year, it's possible he was on pace to do the same In the next. Now those would be losses (assuming a Republican can't be swung).
2. Virginia Governor - This does a lot of things for Democrats. It keeps Virginia from being a Republican "trifecta" with them in control of all three branches (and leaves the possibility that it can be a Democratic one after 2019 or some fortuitous special elections. The GOP only controls the state Senate by 1 seat and could control the House of Delegates by 1 or fewer. Perhaps more importantly, Northam will be governor during the next redistricting and can veto any pro-GOP gerrymandered maps, or approve a Democratically-gerrymandered one. And this win protects Virginia's two Senate seats from a GOP appointment should Kaine or Warner leave office early and allows the governor to use his office to enfranchise and protect as many voters as the law will allow.
3. New Jersey Governor - This wasn't as big a win for Democrats as Virginia, but still big. It creates a Democratic trifecta in NJ and protects NJ's Senate seats (no small thing) and again allows for the Governor to use his power to protect Democratic voters from Republican shenanigans. But, unlike in VA, the governor of NJ doesn't have a roll in redistricting.
4. Washington State Senate Special Elections - This created an opportunity to flip the state Senate and create a Democratic trifecta, something Democrats managed to do.
5. Virginia State Senate Special Elections - Democrats had an opportunity to flip the state Senate, but came up short. I rank this above the House of Delegates special election (which is still up in the air) because a win a January 2017, when the seats needed were available, would have resulted in control for 3 years instead of 2. If the House of Delegates doesn't flip, this doesn't matter too much.
6. Virginia House of Delegates - This wasn't that important once the Senate didn't flip and Democrats won the governorship. Regardless of who wins, legislation will still need to get through the GOP-controlled Senate and the Democratic Governor, so the final outcome might not matter to actual legislation or policy in Virginia. That could change with a special of course, but for now this is actually low importance. We might be a few months from knowing the winner too.
Not many of the other races carried a lot of weight frankly. The races could flip a seat in a legislature without flipping the legislature. Sure, wins in these elections set up wins in the next and they serve as the bush leagues for future candidates and staffers. The fact that Democrats flipped more special election seats than Republicans did (14 to 3) is good for Democrats and means that more Democrats are being given an opportunity to learn how to govern and campaign, but they won't change any legislation in the short term.
But Democrats won the 4 most important elections, maybe 5 of the 6 that really mattered and picked up more seats in special elections than they lost. Not bad.
The next elections that really matter are the 2018 midterms, and there is MUCH more on the line there.
Thursday, December 21, 2017
Monday, December 4, 2017
When the Voyagers passed the Pioneers
At this point, the United States has launched 5 spacecraft (and a bunch of junk associated with them1) onto a path out of the Solar System. These spacecraft are going in different directions and at different speeds and since their launches, there has been some jockeying for position - with more to come. What isn't clear is when each of these changes in position happened. The spacecraft in question, and the date and order of their launch, are listed below
Pioneer 10 - 3/3/1972
Pioneer 11 - 4/6/1973
Voyager 2 - 8/22/1977
Voyager 1 - 9/5/1977
New Horizons - 1/19/2006
But they have not all been travelling the same speed. By speed they're currently ordered:
Voyager 1
Voyager 2
New Horizons
Pioneer 10
Pioneer 11
And, because they will be travelling for so very very long (possibly "forever") this will eventually be their final order in distance from the Sun (assuming New Horizons doesn't slow down too much - see below). But that hasn't sorted itself out yet and so as of 2017, this is their current order.
Voyager 1
Pioneer 10
Voyager 2
Pioneer 11
New Horizons
This means there has been 4 times that one of the spacecraft have passed one of the other, and there are 3 more position changes yet to come. The future position changes can only be estimated, and might not ever be known with any certainty, but they are
Voyager 2 past Pioneer 10 - ~2019
New Horizons past Pioneer 11 - ???
New Horizons past Pioneer 10 - ???
I have not seen an official estimate for when New Horizons will pass the Pioneers, but we can figure out an estimate.
And the position changes that have already occurred were
Voyager 1 past Voyager 2 - December 19, 1977
Voyager 1 past Pioneer 11 - ???
Voyager 2 past Pioneer 11 - ???
Voyager 1 past Pioneer 10 - February 17, 1998
Unfortunately, when Pioneer 11 was passed was not noted at the time, or if it was, was not recorded anywhere that I can find. But we can come up with an estimate of that too.
Let's do Voyager 1 passing Pioneer 11 first. We can easily put it in a window. Voyager 1 passed Saturn in 1980 about a year after Pioneer 11 did, so it would have to be after that. And in 1987, it was 2.9 billion miles from Earth, a distance Pioneer 11 wouldn't get to until 1990 when it passed beyond Neptune's orbit. So, Voyager 1 must have passed Pioneer 11 between 1980 and 1987. But that's a pretty big window. We can do better.
We can use the data from a now defunct, but archived, website that gave updated position and velocity data for all four satellites. The oldest page is from 2002. If we use that data, and assume constant speed [(85.037-3.634x)=(61.948-2.474x)], we have an overtake date of 7/19/1982. The problem is we can't assume constant speed because they're slowing down.
So I plugged in the speeds and dates for a bunch of the older pages and fit a linear curve to them and then used that curve to calculate their speed every day and then that to backwards calculate their position. After all that, I got an overtake date of 8/31/1983.
So, I'm willing to say that the actual date was in the 1982-1983 range, but I can't narrow it down anymore than that.
Similarly for Voyager 2 and Pioneer 11, we can make a window between August of 1981 (when Voyager 2 visits Saturn ~24 months after Pioneer 11) and August of 1989 (When Voyager 2 passes Neptune, 6 months ahead of Pioneer 11). But during that time, Voyager 2 passes both Uranus and Neptune and both those encounters change its speed and direction. This makes the speed in 2002 and after somewhat meaningless. About the best I can do is use the numbers above to say that it gained 30 months over 7 years. If we extrapolate that, it means that Voyager 2 overtook Pioneer 11 around March of 1988. But it was probably earlier because Voyager 2 was travelling away from the Sun faster between Saturn and Uranus than it was between Uranus and Neptune.
Figuring out when New Horizons will pass Pioneer 10 and 11 involves extrapolating the speed and location into the future. I have to do it so far out, that tiny errors propagate until they're very large, so this is low confidence. Further complicating things is that New Horizons is slowing down about 10 times faster than Pioneer 11 is right now, and it's very hard for me to say where that will settle out. In fact if it continues to slow down at its current rate, it might not catch Pioneer 10 at all. 3 years ago is was going 0.67 AU/per year faster than Pioneer 10, but now it's only going 0.47 AU faster. It might not even catch Pioneer 11. But at current speeds (as of December 2017), it won't catch Pioneer 11 until 2113 and won't catch Pioneer 10 until 2187, and neither of those account for the rate at which the spacecraft are slowing down.
1. In addition to the five satellites, four of their third stages (all but Pioneer 11's), and a pair of yo-yo de-spin weights from New Horizons are also leaving the Solar System. But these items are untrackable.
2. Lee Siegel (August 30, 1987). "Voyager Spacecraft on Eternal Mission" , New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung
Pioneer 10 - 3/3/1972
Pioneer 11 - 4/6/1973
Voyager 2 - 8/22/1977
Voyager 1 - 9/5/1977
New Horizons - 1/19/2006
But they have not all been travelling the same speed. By speed they're currently ordered:
Voyager 1
Voyager 2
New Horizons
Pioneer 10
Pioneer 11
And, because they will be travelling for so very very long (possibly "forever") this will eventually be their final order in distance from the Sun (assuming New Horizons doesn't slow down too much - see below). But that hasn't sorted itself out yet and so as of 2017, this is their current order.
Voyager 1
Pioneer 10
Voyager 2
Pioneer 11
New Horizons
This means there has been 4 times that one of the spacecraft have passed one of the other, and there are 3 more position changes yet to come. The future position changes can only be estimated, and might not ever be known with any certainty, but they are
Voyager 2 past Pioneer 10 - ~2019
New Horizons past Pioneer 11 - ???
New Horizons past Pioneer 10 - ???
I have not seen an official estimate for when New Horizons will pass the Pioneers, but we can figure out an estimate.
And the position changes that have already occurred were
Voyager 1 past Voyager 2 - December 19, 1977
Voyager 1 past Pioneer 11 - ???
Voyager 2 past Pioneer 11 - ???
Voyager 1 past Pioneer 10 - February 17, 1998
Unfortunately, when Pioneer 11 was passed was not noted at the time, or if it was, was not recorded anywhere that I can find. But we can come up with an estimate of that too.
Let's do Voyager 1 passing Pioneer 11 first. We can easily put it in a window. Voyager 1 passed Saturn in 1980 about a year after Pioneer 11 did, so it would have to be after that. And in 1987, it was 2.9 billion miles from Earth, a distance Pioneer 11 wouldn't get to until 1990 when it passed beyond Neptune's orbit. So, Voyager 1 must have passed Pioneer 11 between 1980 and 1987. But that's a pretty big window. We can do better.
We can use the data from a now defunct, but archived, website that gave updated position and velocity data for all four satellites. The oldest page is from 2002. If we use that data, and assume constant speed [(85.037-3.634x)=(61.948-2.474x)], we have an overtake date of 7/19/1982. The problem is we can't assume constant speed because they're slowing down.
So I plugged in the speeds and dates for a bunch of the older pages and fit a linear curve to them and then used that curve to calculate their speed every day and then that to backwards calculate their position. After all that, I got an overtake date of 8/31/1983.
So, I'm willing to say that the actual date was in the 1982-1983 range, but I can't narrow it down anymore than that.
Similarly for Voyager 2 and Pioneer 11, we can make a window between August of 1981 (when Voyager 2 visits Saturn ~24 months after Pioneer 11) and August of 1989 (When Voyager 2 passes Neptune, 6 months ahead of Pioneer 11). But during that time, Voyager 2 passes both Uranus and Neptune and both those encounters change its speed and direction. This makes the speed in 2002 and after somewhat meaningless. About the best I can do is use the numbers above to say that it gained 30 months over 7 years. If we extrapolate that, it means that Voyager 2 overtook Pioneer 11 around March of 1988. But it was probably earlier because Voyager 2 was travelling away from the Sun faster between Saturn and Uranus than it was between Uranus and Neptune.
Figuring out when New Horizons will pass Pioneer 10 and 11 involves extrapolating the speed and location into the future. I have to do it so far out, that tiny errors propagate until they're very large, so this is low confidence. Further complicating things is that New Horizons is slowing down about 10 times faster than Pioneer 11 is right now, and it's very hard for me to say where that will settle out. In fact if it continues to slow down at its current rate, it might not catch Pioneer 10 at all. 3 years ago is was going 0.67 AU/per year faster than Pioneer 10, but now it's only going 0.47 AU faster. It might not even catch Pioneer 11. But at current speeds (as of December 2017), it won't catch Pioneer 11 until 2113 and won't catch Pioneer 10 until 2187, and neither of those account for the rate at which the spacecraft are slowing down.
1. In addition to the five satellites, four of their third stages (all but Pioneer 11's), and a pair of yo-yo de-spin weights from New Horizons are also leaving the Solar System. But these items are untrackable.
2. Lee Siegel (August 30, 1987). "Voyager Spacecraft on Eternal Mission" , New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung
Sunday, December 3, 2017
In a just world, both Alabama and Ohio State would miss the playoffs
As previously determined, these are the teams that should be in the playoffs, though this probably won't be the four teams.
UCF
Oklahoma
Georgia
Clemson
That's right, no Ohio State, no Wisconsin an no Alabama. What did UCF do, they beat every team they faced (admittedly needing 2 OTs to beat Memphis) including the only Big 10 team they faced. And they did it while their schedule got blown up by hurricanes. If Ohio State wanted to play in the title game, they should have beaten Iowa. Wisconsin and Alabama should have won their conferences. That is all.
UCF
Oklahoma
Georgia
Clemson
That's right, no Ohio State, no Wisconsin an no Alabama. What did UCF do, they beat every team they faced (admittedly needing 2 OTs to beat Memphis) including the only Big 10 team they faced. And they did it while their schedule got blown up by hurricanes. If Ohio State wanted to play in the title game, they should have beaten Iowa. Wisconsin and Alabama should have won their conferences. That is all.
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