The NASA Space Launch System (SLS) has its first launch currently planned for 2018, with the system planned to eventually transport humans to Mars. The high costs to the program coupled with the prospect of outsourcing the expedition to Mars to private entities, like SpaceX, could outweigh the benefits. The benefits and costs of the system are of concern to the stakeholders of the system. Congress, a NASA stakeholder, considers the economic "value" of the SLS when determining resource allocation for NASA funding. Previous research that attempted to aggregate benefits to the national economy typically incorporated an econometric approach, which is based solely on past data and fails to consider the intended goals of Congress. Understanding Congress' goals will enable a high level objective function to be constructed which incorporates system and mission attributes that directly and indirectly influence those goals. The proposed research plans to optimize NASA's resources that impact Congress' goals using a value-based design approach. This value-based approach will help determine the optimal decision concerning funding allocation. This method is unique as prioritization of economic data is not based on the designer's—the model builder's—assumed congressional goals as typically founded in other macroeconomic models, but, rather, on the prioritization derived from the stakeholder's (Congress') goals, who are directly influencing the funding allocation for NASA.
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