There was some wringing of hands recently about the listing I published for a geocache hidden on the International Space Station by Richard Garriott, one of the first space tourists and the creator of the Ultima game series. It was initially denied under the guidelines, so it went through the appeals process. Ultimately I was the one to publish it. The response was overwhelmingly positive, but a few people said that the cache violated the guidelines and should be archived.
We intentionally have guidelines instead of rules because occasionally something comes along that defies definition under the current guidelines (and, in this case, is totally fracking cool). The are called guidelines so we have the ability to adapt. In the case of the ISS, some people quoted the guidelines about moving caches as the reason why the ISS cache shouldn't be listed. We disagree.
A moving cache was a cache that, when found, would be picked up and moved to a new location. The coordinates would then be updated on the site. Theses caches resulted in many frustrated geocachers going to the listed coordinates and finding that the cache was no longer there. Even worse, people would increase their search, thinking that the cache was still there, adding to the frustration and the impact to the area surrounding its former location. And moving caches never went through a review process to ensure it followed the guidelines - especially the important ones like private property, distance to another geocache, etc. So we added a guideline to restrict moving caches.
So in the case of the International Space Station, if you are able to dock to the station the cache will be there, so it doesn't really violate the intent of the guideline. Since the cache is in the Space Station it technically doesn't move in relation to the station.
Heck, if we were literal about the moving cache guideline, we wouldn’t be able to publish any geocache! Earth itself travels at about 66,660 miles per hour. This doesn’t even include the expansion of the universe at around 43 miles per second.
So as a result of the new cache listing, I have created a draft to be added to the current guidelines so that it is well understood what is acceptable about caches in space.
Geocaches in Space (or other planets/spacecraft)We do allow cache placement in outer space, such as the International Space Station, or Mars. Make sure you can land or connect to the space station/planet for it to be acceptable as a listing. Keep in mind, however, that due to the 520ft guideline you can't place another cache on the ISS since one is already listed there.
PS. For fun, we’ll also be updating the coordinates of the cache to reflect the current location of the space station, but keep in mind that the space station travels at 17,500 miles per hour so it will already be out of date by the time you refresh the page anyway.
