Federated Simulation and Gaming Framework for a Decentralized Space-Based Resource Economy

Abstract

Future human space exploration will require large amounts of resources for shielding and building materials, propellants, and consumables. A space-based resource economy could produce, transport, and store resource at distributed locations such as the lunar surface, stable orbits, or Lagrange points to avoid Earth"s deep gravity well. Design challenges include decentralized operation and management and sociotechnical complexities not commonly addressed by modeling and simulation methods. This paper seeks to tackle these challenges by applying aspects of military wargaming to promote effective communication between decision-makers. A software architecture for federated simulation based on IEEE-1516 (HLA-Evolved) is presented in the context of multiple lunar in-situ resource production processes, resource depots, and intermediate transportation. The federation-level framework identifies interfaces between simulation models (federates), focusing on persistent assets (elements) and resources exchanged. Future work will develop the federated resource economy model and evaluate with decision-makers playing the roles of competing and collaborating players.

Decision Support Model and Visualization for Assessing Environmental Phenomena, Ecosystem Services, Policy Consequences, and Satellite Design Using Earth Observation Data

“…The potential questions and user processes for two of these audiences, a local community member and an EOS designer, are shown in Figure 3. Once identified, these audiences can be engaged either individually or as cross-audience groups in directed workshops to assess validity via the collection of methods known as purposeful gaming [37], wargaming [38][39][40], and role playing gaming [41,42]. Fig.…”