Building Spacecraft and Gizmos from scratch on another celestial body

[NSEP]

My question here is, is it possible to build a spacecraft, habitat, or another gizmo from scratch without getting any extra resources shipped to base from Earth. 

P.S

Sorry for being unclear, i meant in a base with a mine, a refinery, a farm for organic materials etc. Just from Mars gathered resources only.

Edited August 17, 2017 by NSEP

[YNM]

Pedantically, no. The toolings, and even the assemblers and makers will have to come from Earth, unless they arise and evolve by itself.

Technically, maybe, but it'll need a lot of resource.

[softweir]

Agreed. Getting started would be a huge effort, and a lot of machines and essential components would need to be sent to whichever body one is talking about. One might be able to build some simple machines on the moon by sending the electronics and other precision components, along with a small robot to assemble them and a small oven to construct larger components by fusing regolith. The fused regolith wouldn't be very strong, but in that low gravity strength is much less of an issue than on Earth so it might be sufficient.

Building a rocket... Nope. Not without many, many billions of dollars and many, many decades, even centuries of effort. We would have to start by sending a huge amount of startup infrastructure, and it would take a lot of trial and error to build new machines from scratch using the materials available. It is quite likely that a rocket manufactury on the moon would never be completely self-sufficient, and would depend on some refined materials being sent from Earth: the infrastructure needed for producing the dopes used in semiconductor manufacture (for instance) is huge!

Considering the very unlikely hypothesis that we could do it, then there would be advantages. There is no ecology on the moon to destroy, so we could mine and plunder what we needed without any concerns for the morality of wiping out species or fears for poisoning ourselves. Without a rain cycle, waste would stay where it was dumped. Solar power would be available in huge amounts, just by laying out large arrays of solar panels. And the products of a moon-based infrastructure would be in an ideal gravitational situation to be sent to much of the rest of the solar system, helping to start infrastructures elsewhere.

[Steel]

53 minutes ago, NSEP said:

My question here is, is it possible to build a spacecraft, habitat, or another gizmo from scratch without getting any extra resources shipped to base from Earth. 

Unless you're planning on recreating the entire history of human tool use in a vastly accelerated time period (i.e starting off with stone tools and gradually working your way up to precision CNC machines and silicon foundries for electronics) then no. 

All the technology we have now is entirely reliant on the technology that preceded it, and this goes all the way back to the beginning. Thus, if you take away everything, you have to start right back from the beginning and build up to get to today's technology.

Edited August 17, 2017 by Steel

[NSEP]

5 minutes ago, Steel said:

Unless you're planning on recreating the entire history of human tool use in a vastly accelerated time period (i.e starting off with stone tools and gradually working your way up to precision CNC machines and silicon foundries for electronics) then no. 

All the technology we have now is entirely reliant on the technology that preceded it, and this goes all the way back to the beginning. Thus, if you take away everything, you have to start right back from the beginning and build up to get to today's technology.

hmmm, Hmmmm, HMMMMM. That would be really interesting though.

[KerbMav]

Keep in mind that counter to what games show us ... well, on Mars you would not even find a stick to make your first miracle-chops-everything-pickaxe, let alone water and clay for a furnace - for which you would not have the materials to heat it up.

On a life harboring planet with adequate biosphere for humans things would look a bit better. Minimally.

[NSEP]

Okay now say you have a colony with everything you need, a mining rig/quarry/mine, a refinery, and a workshop (maybe even a 3D printer), and biological material can also be produced in farms. Would you still be able to make a habitat?

[Steel]

1 hour ago, NSEP said:

hmmm, Hmmmm, HMMMMM. That would be really interesting though.

Oh yeah, it would be an immense achievement and a really interesting experimenter to see if it could actually be done. The other problem that you have, as @KerbMav pointed out, is that many primitive technologies are reliant on other living things (sticks from trees, fur/skin from animals) so you'd actually have to reinvent some primitive technologies in light of the fact that, for example, there are no sticks on Mars with which to make an axe, nor are there any trees to cut down to build furniture and equipment (a LOT of humanity's tools are wood based). The other Major thing is that you can't light a fire or the Moon/Mars, so how can you get metals from ore?

5 minutes ago, NSEP said:

Okay now say you have a colony with everything you need, a mining rig/quarry/mine, a refinery, and a workshop (maybe even a 3D printer), and biological material can also be produced in farms. Would you still be able to make a habitat?

In theory, yes. As long as you can synthesise/grow trees to make rubber for seals and things, and you have a sufficiently advanced workshop to make things like high quality canvas for a hab. The big thing is the electronics, silicon is tricky stuff, so making solid-state electronics would be difficult unless you had a full-scale silicon foundry.

Edited August 17, 2017 by Steel

[magnemoe]

7 hours ago, Steel said:

Unless you're planning on recreating the entire history of human tool use in a vastly accelerated time period (i.e starting off with stone tools and gradually working your way up to precision CNC machines and silicon foundries for electronics) then no. 

All the technology we have now is entirely reliant on the technology that preceded it, and this goes all the way back to the beginning. Thus, if you take away everything, you have to start right back from the beginning and build up to get to today's technology.

Note that you will have CNC machines and 3d printers as part of you initial infrastructure, presses for making plates too.
However the list of things who is hard to make is far longer than the list you can make even with an advanced workshop on mars. 
You can 3d print the injector and use cnc for the nozzle but you can not make the turbo pump who require more advanced materials, you can probably not even make the ball bearings. 
However if you can also make the tanks and structure you can make more than 90% of the weight, the rest you import or recycle. 

Almost all ISRU for construction focus on the basic items who is easy to make and you need lots of, far easier to ship electronic than concrete. 
And an complete self independent colony is very far off as in hundred of years and even then probably require an political desire to make it independent even if very expensive. 

[sevenperforce]

It's easy.

Collect a lot of hydrogen.

Like, a lot.

No, you're going to need a lot more than that.

Let it condense into a sphere.

Wait until its self-gravitation ignites fusion in its core.

Wait for the fusion to grow most of the elements you want.

Wait for the death of fusion to result in a core-collapse supernova, creating the rest of the elements you want. 

Send Von Neumann probes around to collect raw materials from the supernova remnant.

Wait, what were you saying about Mars?