Yeah I think we need replicators, self-sealing stem bolts, programmable shape shifting materials, etc. I like the imagination that movies like Outland instilled, but realistically putting a full blown mining and smelt operation onto another world, even the moon? If we have a cable car all the way to moon, OK, but rockets?
The funny part about Outland is that it assumed men in the future doing offworld mining would all sport 70s hairstyles and smoke like chimneys. Go watch it again and look at the scene where they're having a meeting: the smoke is so thick in the conference room you can barely see anyone!
Of course, that movie had some other really serious problems: it seemed to assume that there was artificial gravity, but that it only worked inside the station, and stopped at the roof (so when a guy is walking around inside a tunnel, he's at Earth-normal gravity, but when another guy is making an ambush for him on the outside roof of this tunnel, he's in microgravity).
