Lunar Development Cooperative Simulation Tabletop Game#

Author: Michael Castle-MillerDate: Jan 13, 2025

Abstract#

We will design a simulation tabletop game that will be used as a tabletop exercise at workshops, universities, and conferences. Participants would step into the role of a government or commercial space company operating in a future lunar economy. The simulation will also include a Lunar Development Cooperative (LDC), which aims to create hubs on the Moon serving LDC members who all follow shared standards and rules of conduct.

Participants will carry out activities on the Moon while aiming to enhance their own interests, navigate potential conflicts, and negotiate and reach agreements with each other. They can jointly fund and execute missions or they can go it alone. They can also choose whether to become an LDC member or not.

The simulation will be an excellent opportunity to test which situations make collaboration and long-term solutions more likely on the Moon and which lead to short-term thinking and conflict. It will involve students, policy makers, and space industry professionals all engaging with one another to find creative solutions to individual and collective problems.

This simulation is part of a broader project to help research and design the LDC. The LDC is a model for developing a future lunar economy that is being developed by a team of space experts and economic development professionals. For more information about the project and the people involved, please visit www.lunardevelopmentcooperative.com

Problem#

Humans cannot sustainably expand their presence into space without a lunar economy. But there are major barriers preventing us from developing a lunar economy, including:

1. Coordination problems that make it difficult to raise large amounts of capital for major space infrastructure, like prospecting, power stations, landing pads, and communications systems.
2. Many of the rules for space are vague and lack an international enforcement mechanism. This will result in interference, land grabs, and conflict by parties from different nations.
3. Because of (1) and (2), the most valuable areas of the Moon are at risk of being monopolized by the first major nations or private corporations that establish a presence there. That would make it very hard to keep space open, competitive, and free for other parties, especially less-developed nations

The LDC model is designed to solve these problems in a highly practical way. However, to build it effectively, we need to do much more work designing the details of the LDC’s strategy and governance structure, and testing them in simulated scenarios. Otherwise, we’re at risk of the LDC being ineffective.

Solution#

We will design a simulation game for use in workshops with invited participants, including global policymakers, industry executives, and others in the space community. The simulation will examine the potential for cooperative solutions between different nations and enterprises pursuing their own separate interests. In the process, it will help answer key questions about the LDC model – including, but not limited to:

• What actions or scenarios make various types of nations more likely to join as members?
• How does the concentration of lunar resources and built infrastructure affect actors’ behavior?
• What policies lead to positive, long-term outcomes on the Moon?

Our deliverable under this grant will be a play-test ready prototype. The scale and complexity of what we produce at this stage will depend somewhat on whether we obtain additional funding beyond this grant request. We will be seeking additional funding from other sources to develop a more complete version.

**Elements of the Simulation:**Roles of Participants:

• LDC Management
• National Governments (e.g., USA, China, India, Russia, Canada, European Union, South Korea, Japan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Australian, Brazil, Egypt, Nigeria, etc.)
• Commercial space companies from various nations and of various sizes.

Physical Elements:

• Scaled maps of high-interest areas of the Moon, with labels for key geological features. (We may work with a group like the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium (LSIC) or student volunteers to help develop these, if feasible).
• Pieces representing assets placed by participants (e.g., landing pads, power stations, research outposts, etc.)

Types of activities simulated and their effects:

• Sending prospecting missions – reveals information about a tile of land on the lunar map and raises the national prestige of the nation that sends it.
• Building infrastructure (landing pads, power stations, communications, etc.) – lowers costs for operating in a given area. Landing pads also reduce damage (from landing/launch dust plumes) to others’ assets within a region.
• Building Research Outposts / Observatories – raises national prestige.
• Lunar policy making – rules governing activities.
• Mining lunar resources – generates revenue.

All of these activities have costs. Participants can negotiate agreements for sharing in the building and use of assets, and determine how the benefits will be allocated.

Role Objectives:

LDC Management

LDC Management will pay members to send prospecting missions or build infrastructure in certain areas of the Moon. The benefits of these assets will only be available to LDC members. The LDC can also enact various policies, such as requiring members to use landing pads or prohibiting the development of certain areas for scientific or cultural reasons.

The LDC’s objectives are to maximize the overall success of its members at attaining their objectives.

National Governments

Each national government will have a budget that roughly reflects real-world wealth and space budget distribution. They can use this budget to send prospecting missions, build infrastructure, and build research outposts. If they choose to become LDC members, they will be contractually obligated to abide by the rules for members.

Each national government’s objective is to maximize their national prestige at the least cost. Participants will be scored based on their efficiency, not their total national prestige at the end. This means that a small-budget nation that makes wise use of its resources will outperform a large space power that does not.

Commercial Space CompaniesCommercial space companies can do all of the activities that nations can as well as mine resources for profit. Governments may pay them for these activities, or, as the lunar economy matures, do them on their own. Commercial space companies’ objectives are to maximize profit and their control over use of the Moon.

If we can do so without adding too much complexity, we may expand the game to add other roles relevant to a future lunar economy, such as investors, insurance providers, and international bodies (e.g., UN COPUOS).

We may need to create a scaled down, simplified version of this simulation. That will be partly determined by how complex this full vision turns out to be as we test it and whether we can implement it without confusing everyone participating. It also might be determined by how much additional funding we receive for the game design from other funders.

What We Need

We need funding to design this simulation in much greater detail. This includes designing:

• The actions players can take (including the specific costs and effects of actions)
• The mechanics (order of play, how results of actions are represented, and statuses are updated)
• The characteristics of different types of players (nations’ budgets, etc.)
• How the value of resource deposits at specific lunar locations is determined and revealed to players after prospecting missions.
• How players can view their information and how that information is updated (resource data, their scores, their total financial information)

We also need funding to create the physical elements of the game – perhaps including the map, an overlay dividing the map into tiles, the pieces representing lunar assets, and country flags. We may need to set up shared software (perhaps Google Sheets) to display and update information for each player on their own devices.

We’ll aim to design a version of the game that can be used for virtual simulations as well. This will involve finding a way to translate the physical elements into something that can be viewed by players, without a huge expense on software development. We probably won't be able to design this under this grant, but if we get additional funding, we will certainly aim for this.

Where this will be used

We’ve formed relationships with several space organizations and universities that will likely want to host a simulation like this. These include the Secure World Foundation, Georgetown University, AIAA, Aerospace Corporation, MITRE, Space Foundation, Johns Hopkins APL, MoonDAO, Beyond Earth Institute, the European Space Resources Innovation Council, Arizona State University, the University of Central Florida, and others. We are aiming to hold day-long exercises at AIAA’s ASCEND 2026 conference in Washington, DC, on May 18th and the International Astronautical Congress in Antalya, Turkey from Oct. 5-9. Details for these are still being confirmed.

We’ll also run a special virtual simulation for MoonDAO citizens if & when we can design a virtual version.

The cost of running the simulation in specific instances (costs of room, food and beverage, etc.) are not included in this grant. This project would just help cover the design and materials we’d use and take with us whenever we run it. We’ll seek other sponsors for these specific instances.

Distribution & Usage Rights After we develop the prototype, run the simulation a few times, and tweaked the game, we will then determine how widely we distribute the game and who may use it. If we find that the game has the potential to raise significant revenue for the LDC effort, we may be more restrictive about who can use it. If it doesn't have this potential, we'll probably make it available to the public.

Where this is headedThis tabletop simulation will yield important feedback for the LDC project. We’ll evaluate outcomes and identify trends that emerge from different situations, and use this information to shape the design of the LDC and the governance framework it seeks to build.

Additionally, this simulation will be a stepping stone to building an online simulation game. For version 1.0, think “Railroad Tycoon 3” as a reference. For later versions, think “Geopolitical Simulator 4” or “Victoria 3”. Ultimately, we’d aim at something with the emergent characteristics of “Eve Online”, but for the cislunar ecosystem and more realistic for the next 300-400 years. A description of this online game is available.

Benefits#

• The simulation will help test and refine a model (the LDC) that will make a lunar settlement financially possible and well governed.
• MoonDAO will be listed as a sponsor of the simulation whenever it is presented, including at the events we expect to run it at. This will expose major policymakers and industry leaders from around the world to MoonDAO.
• The simulation will give MoonDAO citizens an opportunity to work with a model for developing space. We can run this simulation with MoonDAO as many times as it makes sense.
• Expand’s students' understanding and engagement with the decisions that space policymakers will be faced with in a future lunar economy.

Risks#

1. Funding for implementation - We will need to secure sponsors to run the simulation at in-person events – for securing a room, food and beverage, etc. However, based on the level of interest in this idea we’ve received, we believe we’ll have several organizations that are willing to host events at no cost or provide grants to rent space.
2. Complexity - The simulation design might become too complex to implement and understand. We need to find a happy medium, where we simulate enough moving parts to accomplish our research objectives, while being simple enough to implement.
   We will mitigate this risk by working with experts to determine how to scale down the mechanics to those necessary for producing the insights we want. These experts will include people from the [LDC Working Group and Board of Advisors](http://www.lunardevelopmentcooperative.com/team). We’ll also do several test runs as we develop it, tweaking it as we go.

Objectives#

Objective #1: A simulation that can be implemented for in-person and virtual gatherings of 20-80 participants and yield useful insights into what works and doesn’t work for building and governing a lunar economy.Key Results for Objective #1:

• A list, with descriptions, of actions made by LDC that tend to improve economic and social conditions on the Moon and that do not tend to do that.
• A list, with descriptions, of scenarios that tend to align lunar actor’s incentives with long-term positive economic and social outcomes and that make them not aligned. (i.e, when do people pursue short-term gains and plunder and destroy long-term value vs. invest in long-term value creation and flourishing)
• A majority of participants in the initial test runs report that the simulation gave them a stronger grasp of issues facing lunar development and how to deal with them.

Member(s) responsible for OKR and their role: Michael Castle Miller

Team (Table A)#

Project Lead: Michael Castle-Miller - lead designer and project manager.(individual proposal)

Team Bios

Project Lead and Multisig Member 1: *Michael Castle-Miller, https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-castle-miller-554a4713/\*Michael Castle-Miller is the Founder of the Lunar Development Institute and concept creator behind the Lunar Development Cooperative. He is also a Senior Advisor at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group and leads the organization’s work on special economic zones. Mr. Castle-Miller works across all regions, specializing in the design of legal and administrative frameworks to govern SEZs, cities, and semi-autonomous regions. He has advised clients in over 35 countries to help draft laws and regulations, create administrative agencies, develop policies, and structure public-private partnerships. Previously, Mr. Castle-Miller was a Partner and Practice Lead at DGA-Albright Stonebridge Group. He also led Politas Consulting and was a consultant at the World Bank.

Multisig Member #2: Pablo MoncadaPablo Moncada-Larrotiz is a notable figure in the field of decentralized technology, especially known for co-founding MoonDAO, a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) aimed at democratizing space exploration. Before venturing into the realm of DAOs, he worked as a software engineer at Google, where his roles spanned projects at Waymo, YouTube, and other initiatives such as working on exoskeletons for enhancing lower body mobility. He was also a core developer for ConstitutionDAO, a DAO that raised $47 million to purchase an original copy of the U.S. Constitution from Sotheby’s. Pablo’s journey also includes time at a biotech start-up focusing on engineering human tissues. His educational background includes studies in Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, and Business at the University of Michigan.Multisig Member #3: @ryan2dRyan joined MoonDAO in August 2022, right after the launch of Coby Cotton, motivated by the vision of decentralizing access to space. Ryan has served on MoonDAO’s senate for over a year and a half, and contributed to numerous MoonDAO projects and initiatives, including our weekly newsletter, a ZeroG adventure alongside three NASA astronauts, and has been coordinating social media and communications as part of the Executive Branch.Multisig Member #4: Phil LindenPhil is a spacecraft engineer, writer, and all around space nerd. His core values are: Do Good, Be Collaborative, Dream Big, Strive for Openness, and Take Pride in Every Task. Phil’s professional experience includes R&D engineering for SpaceX (Mechanical/Reusability Engineering for Dragon Capsule), R&D engineering for Lockheed Martin Space (Electro-Optical engineer), Mission Operations for Planet Labs (Space Systems Engineer), and research for Open Lunar Foundation (Fellow).Multisig Member #5: @name.getColin is a fullstack developer specializing in cutting-edge web2 and web3 technologies. My expertise lies in leveraging powerful frameworks and libraries such as NextJS, ReactJS, CSS, SASS, TailwindCSS, ThreeJS, MongoDB, Firebase, and Thirdweb.Since joining MoonDAO in late October 2022, he has been an active contributor, collaborating with like-minded individuals to push the boundaries of what’s possible in the web3 space.

Timeline (Table B)#

**Deadline for the project:**End of Q1 2026

Budget (Table C)#

Nb: We will seek additional funding from other funders to supplement this budget, but if we don’t obtain it, we’ll still move forward as planned. Additional funding will go toward both the time spent on game design, compensating reviewers and testers, software development, and better gameboard and pieces.