The preparation of solid materials involves the control and manipulation of fluids in ways that are sensitive to gravitational influences. Although these effects are pervasive, surprisingly little is understood about phenomena such as natural convection and containerless processes under boundary conditions of interest to materials processing. Recent emphasis has focused on process fundamentals involving areas such as fluid dynamics, heat flow, and thermophysical property measurement as can be seen in this Symposium. Such a knowledge base is essential to any sensible evolution of the space environment as a capability for studying materials processing and preparing limited quantities of materials under quiescent or containerless conditions for subsequent assessment on earth. A brief overview of current work will be presented, together with possible future directions.