[en] Astrophysical jets are injections of particles, magnetic fields, and possibly large-scale currents into a background plasma, the intergalactic medium. In principle, they are therefore somewhat similar to the laboratory injection of an electron beam into a plasma. We consider scaling between the astrophysical and laboratory cases and discuss the similarities and differences between them. We discuss what aspects of the physics of astrophysical jets might be investigated with electron beam experiments; in general, the laboratory will be most useful to study purely electrodynamic effects