Astronauts experimented with crystals—a crucial component of electronic circuitry—as early as 1973, on NASA’s Skylab space station. For decades, in-space manufacturing has been experimental rather than commercial. A host of new companies like Astral are making use of the lower costs of launching into space, coupled with emerging ways to return things to Earth, to reignite in-space manufacturing. He adds that by 2035 “the anticipation is that the global space economy is going to be a multitrillion-dollar industry, of which in-space manufacturing is probably in the region of about $100 billion.”At its simplest, in-space manufacturing refers to anything made in space that can then be used on Earth or in space itself. “When you shut off gravity, you’re able to fabricate something like an organ,” says Mike Gold, the president of civil and international space business at Redwire, a Florida-based company that has experimented with in-space manufacturing on the International Space Station for years.