There’s a common failure mode in thinking about space exploration where we get caught up in the engineering challenges—delta-v calculations, radia

The In/Finite Game - by JA Westenberg - The Expeditionist

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2024-12-01 02:00:07

There’s a common failure mode in thinking about space exploration where we get caught up in the engineering challenges—delta-v calculations, radiation shielding, life support systems—while missing the meta-level coordination problem. I want to think about an alternative framework: what if we model space exploration as a multiplayer game with imperfect information?

• Dark horse candidates (that guy on Reddit who swears he can build a fusion drive using only Arduino components and pure optimism)

This already gives us interesting dynamics. Financial capital can be converted into technical capital through R&D; technical capital can be converted into social capital through successful missions; and social capital can be converted into financial capital through public support and funding. But these conversions aren’t guaranteed or linear.

The game gets interesting when we look at failure modes. Unlike chess, where a lost piece is just a lost piece, space exploration failures propagate in complex ways: