Pacing space: futuring practices and temporal ownership in the European space sector

Abstract This paper investigates futuring practices in European space policy-making. European space policy is marked by diverse actors and institutions and an interplay of competing temporalities, where long-term ambitions intersect with short-term political pressures, budget constraints, and shifting geopolitical dynamics. Policymakers are often challenged to navigate slow, consensus-driven mechanisms while responding to the accelerating demands of global space competition. We argue that temporal control—how futures are timed, paced, and sequenced—is a crucial yet underexplored dimension of science, technology, and innovation policies. Bridging science and technology studies and futures studies, we develop further the notion of temporal ownership to examine how European actors engage in temporal experimentation to align with global developments and articulate distinctive policy trajectories. Drawing on document analysis, expert interviews, conference ethnographies, and foresight workshops, the study empirically and conceptually contributes to scholarship on public policy by showing how temporal politics shape strategic decision-making in technoscientific governance.