History characterizes the various eras of civilization in terms of available materials technology, leading to the recognition of such eras as the Stone Age, Bronze Age, Steel Age, and Silicon Age. One of the areas of intense research in the present era has been the processing of materials in the space environment to develop new or improved products for use on Earth. In the 1960s, during the early phase of this effort, the advent of a new industry was predicted based on the promising initial results obtained, and it was anticipated that by the 1980s "made in space" would be a common label on a large number of products.

That new manufacturing industry based in space is still in the future, primarily because of the high cost of placing the carrier vehicles into orbit—$35,000 per pound at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Advances...