Traditional in Space? Seriously?

[+Geobricks]

Lately, I've been thinking about the International Space Station Geocache, and saying to myself, "The Traditional Cache in space is the same type of Geocache as where I lift a skirt on a lightpost to find a pill container." That's why I have a new idea. It's a type of cache, called the "Space Cache". It locks a 5 Difficulty and 5 Terrain on the cache, making it impossible to make a 1 in space. There will be an all new map of Geocaches in space, too. This idea could be further implemented, and made even better than mine. Happy Caching!

[+wmpastor]

Lately, I've been thinking about the International Space Station Geocache, and saying to myself, "The Traditional Cache in space is the same type of Geocache as where I lift a skirt on a lightpost to find a pill container." That's why I have a new idea. It's a type of cache, called the "Space Cache". It locks a 5 Difficulty and 5 Terrain on the cache, making it impossible to make a 1 in space. There will be an all new map of Geocaches in space, too. This idea could be further implemented, and made even better than mine. Happy Caching!

Hmmm...very philosophical issues...does "getting to GZ" factor into the terrain rating?...if so, is a cache on the other side of the world a 5.0?!

 

I'm not going to lose sleep over this, though...zzzzz.

[+speakers-corner]

Geocaching in space. For me, this is a waste of time, effort and money.

[+stijnhommes]

Why? You don't need a new cache type to figure out that finding a cache in space will be a challenge. The only thing that could be improved is the coordinate system for caches outside of the earth. If space caching is going to take off we need a coordinate system that allows you to find caches that are not located on the surface of the earth or ones that can not be found by clear directions.

[+thebruce0]

Letterbox hybrid.

Posted coords at favorite space organization.

Multiple trailhead waypoints at the front doors of various places in different countries to begin a journey of education & training and/or private funding in order to make your way into space to locate the posted Final Location waypoint (which has no coordinates entered, only instructions on how to get there per the cache listing).

(and the ISS will of course remain a gradfathered 'Traditional' exception )

Edited November 18, 2013 by thebruce0

[michal.grno]

I think we need an AstroCache type with a special type of coordinates.

The coordinates would look eg. like this:

Earth > {

x = 15°N

y = 10°N

a = 400 km

b = 500 km

t = 90 min

s = 45 min

}

 

This means generally that the center of the cache's orbital is the Earth's core. The orbital is an elipsis with diameters a = 400 km and b = 500 km and is rotated by x around the 0° meridian and by y around the 90° meridian. Maybe this image explains it better (svg here):

 

 

The t and s attributes are there for timing - t is the circulation time and s is synchronization (the object was above the 0° meridian at 1. 1. 1970 00:00 plus s).

 

For some more complicated caches (eg. in other solar systems), this is how to adjust it:

OurGalaxy > {

... //A star orbiting around our galaxy's center

} > {

... //A planet orbiting around the star

} > {

... //A moon orbiting around the planet

} > {

... //The cache!

}

 

But I thing it will take at least 200 years to implement it

[+thebruce0]

There'd need to be other adjustments for GPS calculation as the ISS demonstrates - its orbit isn't uniform, as relative to earth's surface it shifts slightly each orbit...

At least, that's if you're converting its orbital location to Earth-localized GPS coordinates

Edited November 18, 2013 by thebruce0

[michal.grno]

@TheBruce0 Yes, you're right - in my model the orbit spin attribute is missing. So two angles and one speed more in every block... A bit too complicated...

And precession of the perihelion is missing but it's neligible (Mercury 40" per year).

[+thebruce0]

You know, this could be the making of a good puzzle...

 

Use a coordinate system to locate orbital positions... or identify 'arcs' of an orbital route... draw out shapes, letters, numbers - if the person can depict the math being explained... like skywriting, only orbit-writing

haha