Many projects are working on Three-D printing and in situ resource utilitization. Maybe I don’t read enough, but the discussion and popularization seems to have not surpassed some obscurity on the central “what if we had this technology” from the perspective of fundamentals like the periodic table.
So, what if we had a technology that could produce arbitrary mechanical and electrical components and assemblies on scales ranging from nanometers to kilometers? My own thoughts on the subject are described at Ultralight Spaceflight Fabrication. Primary power is solar, secondary power is wind and perhaps geothermal. Land a fabricator on Mars, and execute a program linked from Earth. Land many fabricators on Mars and execute a more complex fabrication program.
From a picometer toolkit of mechanical, electronic, photonic and spintronic combinations of the elements found in the surface and atmosphere — a self sustaining village could be built in a few months.
This future technology builds a cubic meter of a rough mechanical regions in a couple seconds, or a cubic nanometer of logic, emitters or collectors.
