The cis-lunar ecosystem — A systems model and scenarios of the resource industry and its impact

Lunar resources is one of the many new putative business models that may transform space logistics. Yet it competes with Earth-based resources, in a complex trade-off involving both tech development & socioeconomic dynamics. This study models the size vs. time of a future resource ecosystem focused on water for exploration and satellite refueling, in cis-lunar space. We use a recently-developed multi-methodology concept based on System Dynamics and scenario planning, characterizing uncertainties. Top critical uncertainties include the accessibility of resource finds, and government investment into lunar resources, demarcating 2 particularly illustrative scenarios: Moonopolis and Apollo 2.0 — a rosy and a low-resources future. Concurrently, a System Dynamics model with 7 interacting systems is developed: exploration, production, demand, satellite industry, R&D, natural resources, and government. It is based on models of other industries (e.g. oil) and can express the scenarios. Uncertainties in 25 variables are estimated, and sensitivity analysis of ecosystem size is performed globally using variance-based measures, including interaction effects. These show (a) systems are tightly coupled, (b) variable importance is sensitive to the baseline. Three variables are crucial: government support to production development, production firms’ re-investment, and growth of the GEO telecom satellite industry. A lunar resources ecosystem with $32B economic impact after 20 years is plausible, given excellent government support to production capacity, high growth in GEO satellites, early demand and large initial resource discoveries. The main contributions are a novel holistic model of the dynamics of a space resources industry showing how to mix technical & socioeconomic parts, and a first case study of the methodology.