{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.019041365725541694, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.220408163265306, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Space Policy: An Introduction

Space policy as a research endeavor is usually approached only peripherally by social science-oriented policy analysts. The field, thus far, has been largely dominated by engineers and scientists whose focus is more often than not upon the hardware and scientific aspects of the area rather than the political and social processes that lead to particular space policy outcomes. There are often allusions to the ongoing policy process, but most are either fairly elliptic or perfunctory, so that no real insight is gained. From the dominant perspective, policy analysis only detracts from the more critical technical issues, adding nothing of real interest. The result is often an artificial dichotomy between the policy process and the technological product, exhibiting no understanding that technological decisions carry with them social costs, both in terms of burdens and foregone opportunities. When policy analysts do approach the subject, their focus is usually on very specific decisions or programs, with relatively little concern for the general context within which such issues arose and were resolved. In either event, space policy has long been a stepchild (obviously not the only one) of the policy research community and even of the general space community. As we enter the sixth decade of space development and exploration generally (beginning, for the U.S., with the transplanted former Nazi military program in the late forties), and the fifth decade of a distinctly civilian