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Samantha Snabes (‘06 B.S., B.A. CASL, ‘11 MBA COB) has wanted to be an astronaut for as long as she can remember. And not in the way that many people say that was their childhood dream and then moved on to more practical things. Snabes, now 41, still very much wants to go to space — and in fact, has measured many life choices against whether they will take her closer to that goal. It has led her to do all kinds of bold things. When she was 8 years old, she went to space camp, and after she got home, she cross-referenced the astronaut directory with the “White Pages” and called up any astronauts located in Michigan. A few days later, Tony England, a former astronaut and former dean of ���ϸ�����-Dearborn’s College of Engineering and Computer Science, left her a voicemail. It led to a memorable meeting between the two and some practical advice, “I asked him what I needed to do to become an astronaut and he said, ‘Go to college.’”

As a first-generation student, Snabes said college was often a struggle. The only way to pay for it was to take out a lot of student loans, and she, like many first-gen students, often got tripped up navigating the conventions of the university system. When she transferred to ���ϸ�����-Dearborn, she was encouraged to pick a major and admits she didn’t even know what that was. She said astrophysics, a major the university didn’t offer, and then chose biology based on someone’s suggestion that it might be a good fit given her love of science. Knowing of her ultimate dream, one of her professors suggested she should try to get some research experience, and she found a spot doing bench work in a ���ϸ�����-Ann Arbor startup lab that was working with stem cells. Snabes shined in the lab, at one point making an out-of-the-box observation based on something she had learned while making her younger siblings’ Halloween costumes. It saved the then stalled project, and within a couple years, she and one of the project’s lead investigators would team up to create a biotech company.

One thing led to another and another. While at ���ϸ�����-Dearborn, she was able to fly and run an experiment in NASA’s Vomit Comet — a reduced-gravity aircraft that’s used to train astronauts. (The memorable near-weightless moment is still her LinkedIn profile pic.) The contacts at NASA eventually led to a job there, where she focused on the social impact of the agency’s work and made some great connections with Engineers Without Borders. It was during this time that she and a colleague dreamed up a pie-in-the-sky idea for a large-format 3D printer that cost under $10,000 — a technology they believed could help communities across the globe solve all kinds of problems. She said they weren’t trying to start a company. But when they debuted a prototype at SXSW in Austin, their Kickstarter campaign was funded in less than two days. Since then, re:3D has shipped thousands of Gigbot printers across the world, including a new model that can print directly from plastic waste.

Though her work at re:3D now occupies a huge part of her life, Snabes still hasn’t given up on space. In fact, it’s completely possible that given the current interest in long-range space travel, experiments with 3D printing could well be her ticket there. She figures she has one more good shot to get into the astronaut program before she’s “too old.” However it shakes out, her drive and creativity have already fueled a wild ride.

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