Understanding Evolutionary Constraints of a Lunar Base From an Operational Perspective

The United States along with many other spacefaring countries have set the goal of establishing sustained human presence on the lunar surface. To build up to that, certain requirements must be met to fulfill the objectives that have been determined as part of the human lunar campaign. Due to the absence of existing lunar infrastructure, there is an opportunity to establish a systematic approach that will account for the growth of the lunar base as it achieves key milestones over time. Within this systematic approach, measuring the operational performance is crucial to understand the feasibility of the architecture. In this paper, we simulate the operations of the lunar base to ensure that the requirements and objectives are satisfied in each phase of the evolutionary process. The aim is to understand the limitations of architectural phases and identify potential bottlenecks to better inform development timelines. We discuss the methodology used to sample several points in the architectural design space and simulate their operations. By analyzing the sensitivities of objective fulfillment to operational parameters, we identify an appropriate path for lunar base evolution over time.