Ariadne: A Space Program Planning Decision Support Tool for Strategic Planners

The methods and processes available for planning have historically been unable to provide decision-makers with objective, quantitative information from both the upper strategic levels and lower technical levels of the space program. Instead, decision-makers must turn to qualitative assessments, disconnected from any of the fundamental, technical details, where inconsistent comparisons and secondary effects often become the basis of decisions. This status quo leads to misinformed decisions that will have the largest impact on the overall future cost and schedule of a project or program. Similarly, the systems designers and specialists at the lower technical levels are disconnected from any guidance from the overarching goals of the program. Therefore, these technical efforts tend to be pursued and optimized in isolation from the space project or program as a whole. This disconnect can be parametrically corrected to better support the decision-makers at all levels of a space program. In pursuit of a solution, a prototype decision-support system, Ariadne, has been developed to integrate the top-level effects of goals and strategies with the primary technical details of the lower-level mission architectures and associated systems.