A Planning and Decision-Aiding Procedure for Purchasing and Launching Spacecraft

Developing a planning and decision support system (PDSS) to determine the number of spacecraft (communications satellites) to purchase and the timing of the these purchases for INTELSAT was complicated by the length of time necessary to manufacture a spacecraft, the potential for spacecraft failure, uncertain future costs and capacity requirements, multiple, conflicting, and noncommensurate objectives, and various exogenous factors. The PDSS uses the simulation of a large Markov decision process (MDP) to evaluate purchase strategies generated by (1) experts, (2) heuristic procedures, and (3) the solution of an aggregated version of the MDP, thus integrating knowledge engineering and formal reasoning approaches to decision aiding and problem solving.