GLEX-2012.11.1.2x12346 MULTI-STAKEHOLDER SIMULATION AND GAMING ENVIRONMENT FOR A FUTURE RESOURCE ECONOMY IN SPACE

The high cost of launching resources from the Earth’s surface is a significant barrier to future longduration human space exploration. A future resource economy in space may allow resource production, processing, storage, and transportation at distributed locations, but will have many stakeholders with varied and potentially competing objectives. Simulation games provide a medium for communication and learning richer than papers or linear presentations by combining the technical capabilities of simulation models with human interaction. Building on technology powering military wargames, federated simulation architectures such as HLA-Evolved use independently-developed simulation models connected over a distributed network of computers. This paper presents an approach for developing a multi-player simulation gaming environment where human players take on roles of organizations or government agencies within scenarios designed to address the design and operation of a resource economy in space. The game design addresses the number of players, time advancement, level of abstraction, scenario selection, and other decisions based on past simulation games in the domains of military-political, educational, disaster response, and business-management games. Future research will focus on evaluating game executions to analyze human decision-making under various scenarios. Quantitative analysis of decisions using game logs combined with qualitative analysis of interviews and surveys will contribute to strategies for a future resource economy in space.