Would it be possible, in one’s lifetime to build a modern auto from scratch given all the instructions? And I mean from SCRATCH. Build shovel, dig metal, build drill, dig for oil, refine it. Develop plastic, build forms and molds,
build lathes to mill parts and fastners. Plunk someone down in the middle of the woods with all the reference and food they would need, could it be done? Or maybe just an IC engine? If not, how long?
I’ve had that question a lot. I think an automobile would be very hard for various metal-processing reasons. I mean, there are lot of types of metal that have to go into a machine designed to contain and direct the force of gasoline combusting. In order to produce those kinds of metal, you’d need other kinds of metal, etc.
Other things would be sort of high-tech, and much easier. Rockets are pretty easy to build. A lot of first aid technology could be made from scratch - needles, bandages, and that sort of thing. Some stuff would still be pretty hard to build. A lot of our technology relies on iron, which is just not commonly found in elemental form except in meteorites. But once you figured out how to smelt it, you’d open up a whole world of frying pans, knives, belt buckles, wheel rims, etc.
The reason I like this sort of question is that it tries to separate the technique of technology from the hardware. In a lot of way, if you took away all of the stuff from a modern civilization, we’d still be way ahead of the Stone Age. We’d still remember germ theory, celestial navigation, how to read and write, and all sorts of stuff. In other ways, we’d be totally screwed, because we’ve forgotten how to sleep comfortably on the floor of a cave, and how to turn a fresh antelope carcass into food, clothing, tools, and magical amulets with nothing but flint scrapers and bare hands.
Well, I don’t think ONE person would be able to do it all by him/herself… but I assume you figured that…
Given a large enough group of people, with a large enough knowledge base (that is, they know what they need to do, and how to do it, and how to improvise), and plenty of cooperation, it’d probably be possible to build a car starting with just dirt and rocks. Lessee… you’d first have to get plenty of metal, which will take a long time starting from scratch… but once you got started with that, it’d speed up. You’d need to find a source of oil, which would take forever to just locate a site… but again, once you got started with the drilling and refining, it’d speed up. Let’s say that ten years has gone by, and things are just beginning to speed up.
Now, since the ultimate goal is “a car”, we’ll skip the whole process of making manufacturing plants for mass-production of automobiles… and we can even sidestep things like paint and radio (don’t want to factor in the costs of building a radio station, after all, which would then require commercials, musicians, talk show hosts, etc.). After all, we’re only building a car from scratch, not an entire economy.
So you’ve got all the stuff for designing strong metals for an internal combustion engine (probably the hardest part). Now you’ve just gotta mount that on a frame, and viola! you’ve got a (albeit crappy) car. Couldn’t have taken more than fifteen years to do this, right? Starting from scratch? Yeah, that seems like it’d be done within someone’s lifetime…
Interesting to think about, especially at 3:41 AM.
Yes, it’s a very interesting question.
I think before a group of modern people isolated from civilization and its trappings built a workable IC engine, they would need to re-invent the slide rule.
What exactly do you mean by modern? If you’re counting a 50’s type car modern, than it is probably going to be magnitudes easier than building the equipment to make a 2000ish computer controled model.
You’d probably spend your entire lifetime just reading the plans, if they were all on paper (or is that also too high-tech?). The computer in my car probably has over 1 million transistors- instructions on how to build that would take a while to decipher on paper!
As wolfman said, if you limit yourself to a 50’s era car you’ll have a much easier time. How about a Ford Model-T? 
You really need the complete infrastructure of modern society to build something modern. For example, if you have to mine your own iron and refine your own oil, you need to be able to transport them to you (you probably won’t find all your raw materials within horseback distance). This requires railroads, or cars, etc., which requires roads and tracks, etc. etc.
A good analogy was brought up in another thread- if you had complete dinosaur DNA, could clone a dinosaur? The answer is not really, since you would need a dinosaur womb to grow it in (much of the early development depends on being in the womb, interacting with an already-built dinosaur).
Arjuna34
That’s a lot like another scenario I thought of - I was thinking about how modern computers are designed by computers, and the machinery needed to print the circuits is extremely complicated too. If for some reason all 20th century technology was wiped from the face of the Earth, how long would it be before we could build a PC equivelant to what is common now? Months, years, decades?
Back in the 60’s, I recall reading a science fiction novel called Costigan’s Needle. The plot involved an entire block (in Chicago, IIRC) (where a matter-transmission experiment was taking place) being transported to a totally unknown (fortunately Earth-like) world – but only living tissue was transported, so everyone came through buck naked. It took the transportees 20 years to rebuild their technology back to the point where the scientist (Dr. Costigan) could again build a Needle and allow people to transport back to – Earth? If you want to know how it ended, just ask (if you don’t remember it yourself).
I myself don’t think it could be done. What makes you think people would stay civil long enough to make anything worthwhile without the structures of society around them? We lived for hundreds of years in utter squalor and filth with totalitarian rulers. It took some major doing, in addition to a large, stable, prosperous, expanding society, to change anything. I think we’d plunk down a few thousand engineers and scientists and end up with a few hundred starved savages.
However, assuming people stayed civilized they could, in theory, make something resembling a car. Possibly.
This question reminds me of some science fiction time travel things I’ve seen show up in various things. In one of the Star Trek movies, one of the characters showed them how to make transparent steel, and obviously he then went about making some - though he had their help with the raw materials. In addition, I’ve seen other things like person goes back into time and they make various things - even a computer and deviced to get them back - with materials found in the time they were stuck in. Certainly, SciFi has had its share of MacGyver’s! 
As for making something from nothing, which is what the OP asks, anything is possible, but a lot of more complex things we have rely upon technologies that came before them to get invented.
The simplest analogy of this would be that we had to have a wheel invented to make the car. More complex things include needing a constant electric current at a certain voltage which would be necessary to make it even worth having a computer, to use that technology as an example.
Something as simple (to us now) as a bicycle would be insanely difficult to make, what with making rubber, making the tools to form the metal, etc. When we step up to a 1955 DeSoto, it gets that much more complex. If you want to assemble a brand new car from scratch, Ithink that it would takee more than a lifetime for one person, and that I think essentially renders the answer a “no.”
Yer pal,
Satan
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One person? One lifetime? Not even close. It would take thousands and thousands (and more thousands) of individual human lifetimes (in the context of many working at once) to even begin to assemble some of the more basic parts of the technological and industrial infrastructure needed to do this.
Humans by themselves are nothing but egotistical monkeys. Only in concert can we achieve great works.
Like Astro said. It would take many lifetimes just to manage to make a steel hard enough to use in an engine.
A lot of the principles of the car were known for a long, long time. It’s just that no one could build one because there just wasn’t enough prior art. The airplane is an even better example. People knew how to make airplanes fly since the late 1700’s. The problem was that steam engines didn’t have enough power density to be able to lift their own weight. We needed to develop the internal combustion engine, and that required petroleum and the ability to refine gasoline. Then we needed hard metals to make the engines light enough. Then there are spark plugs that are hot enough, crankshafts strong enough not to break, etc. When the technology became available, airplanes started growing like weeds all over the world. If the Wright Brothers hadn’t flown first, there were a dozen other, completely different aircraft designs that could have flown.
Anyway, just to make a hard steel you need a blast furnace. To even make pig iron you need a very hot fire, which requires at minimum coal or some other dense energy source (wood won’t do), and a bellows to heat it.
Just making hard steel ballbearings could take a lifetime.
Quoth Satan: “In one of the Star Trek movies, one of the characters showed them how to make transparent steel, and obviously he then went about making some - though he had their help with the raw materials.”
In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Scotty sells the design matrix for transparent aluminum to one of the local Plexiglas manufacturers, in exchange for enough Plexiglas to hold in 18,000 cubic feet of water. They specificially said that it would take years before they were ready to start building transparent aluminum.
What about when Kirk manufactures a cannon from scratch in order to defeat the Gorn (“Arena”)?
So suppose you crashed on an alien world, with natural resources similar to that of Earth, where the aging process was stopped. Equipped with only your extensive knowledge of technology, how long would it take to make a space station and launch it? 100,000 years?
IIRC, the Greeks (yes, the frickin Greeks!) knew how to build internal combustion engines, and we’ve found evidence of their plans and designs, though, sadly, they were attempting with bronze or copper or something, so their engine didn’t work (if they even put it all together).
Imagine how different the world would be had the internal combustion engine been invented 5000 years ago.
–Tim
Build and launch a space station? Even with a more or less infinite life you still couldn’t do it. It would be nigh impossible by yourself. It would take so long to make each component (by yourself) that by the time you needed to assemble them the component(s) would be practically unusable. “Now… let’s see. Where did I put that guidance module? I know I left it around here about 50,000 years ago.” You would be better off concentrating on selectively breeding the smartest animal you could find to a helpful level of intelligence in order to assist you.
Big complex technology requires lots of people working all at once to create and support it.
They were probably poised to take off (into industry) by the 4th century BC, yet, it did not happen. I’ve always wondered why-they had the mathematics, and the necessary thought processes to build machines. Years ago, Derek de Solla Price found the remains of a greek astronomical computer (the Antithykara machine) in the mediterranean. This machine was amazingly complex-it had sveral gear wheels, and some comp[licated shafting-comparable to a modern clock! Some unnamed genius was able to flatten sheets of bronze by hand, then cut them into accurate gears, finish the teeth, and get the damn thing to work! Imagine if this had continued-we would have had automobiles by the time of Jesus!
So the real question is-why didn’t invention flourish in the ancient world-was it a cultural thing that stopped inovation?