(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2024-01)
Introne, Stephanie; Hawkins, Jacob; Balchanos, Michael; Mavris, Dimitri N.
Developing cislunar architectures involves the consideration of many components, and evaluating
these architectures requires the consideration of many varied perspectives. The process
for making space exploration decisions has become increasingly complicated as interactions
amongst participants have become both more impactful and more fraught. There are many
additional considerations when conducting this type of analysis, including the context in which
the architecture would be operating or the impact of the many assumptions that need to be made.
One way to begin to tackle decision-making processes for cislunar architectures is through the
development of a tabletop exercise that allows users to see how choices impact the resultant
campaign scheduling in real-time, rather than the typical timelines of weeks to months for
additional analysis. A tabletop environment brings stakeholder prioritization and interaction
to schedule optimization, and contextualizes the decision-making through the use of scenarios.
This tabletop tool enables users to compare architectures more quickly than through traditional
methods, which could lead to more interactive studies, where different stakeholders are able to
participate since new analyses can be run in real-time, or the exploration of more unconventional
architectures since there is not the same level of investment needed to obtain results.