Agent-Based Modeling of the Space Tourism Market

Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) involves the interaction of heterogeneous agents with varied and dynamic behavior. Simulation can represent plants and animals in ecosystems, vehicles in traffic, people in crowds, or autonomous characters in animation and games. These models typically consist of an environment or framework in which the interactions occur with some number of individuals that are defined in terms of their behaviors. Each individual can be perceived as an autonomous decision-making entity referred to as an “agent.” The characteristics of each agent can be tracked through time. Each agent decides for itself which actions to perform at what time, based on external conditions and private internal aspects (current beliefs, desires, etc). General benefits of ABM include being able to determine emergent phenomena, able to describe a system in amore natural manner, and flexibility to add more behaviors and complexity. SpaceWorks Engineering, Inc. (SEI) has developed a specific ABM model for space markets, referred to as the Nodal Economic Space Commerce (NESC) model. The NESC model is a dynamic, agent-based market simulation tool for the space marketplace. Each agent in the model is a representation of an entity within the space industry (consumers, producers, and the government) that provides or demands different products and services (Earth-to-orbit launch, habitats, resources, etc). Each agent has certain behaviors and interacts with other agents, such actions possibly resulting in competition between firms and entrance of new competitors. The NESC model contains various future space markets and simulates the financial case of entities that undertake these projects. NESC is of higher fidelity than existing models, and utilizes more advanced financing, acquisition, and overall decision-making strategies throughout the full supply chain of space products and services (from vehicle developers to operators to consumers). ABM allows one to simulate the impact of decisions before applying them in the real world. These choices include behaviors such as end-user price changes, product differentiation, insurance charges, and vehicle cost increases. Additionally, the impact of government actions can be incorporated (price elasticity, technology investment, anchor contracts, tax credits, regulation, etc.). The current model is still in development and this paper is designed to provide an update as to the NESC model and its particular application to space tourism economic modeling. The NESC philosophy allows for a more realistic and dynamic simulation of both traditional and emerging space markets.