Last week, Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft departed the International Space Station, having delivered a batch of new experiments and cargo. Among them was the Refabricator, a new machine that will not only make objects on demand things for the astronauts, it will recycle them too.

While 3-D printers are becoming commonplace, nowhere are their benefits more obvious than in the confines of space. Cargo resupply missions to the ISS are routine, but as human spaceflight pushes farther ou