Yes, but by not being a vehicle you can allocate more schedule, weight, and money to the science type stuff on board instead of the locomotion type stuff.
Engineering for space is all about brutal trade-offs.
Engineering for space is all about brutal trade-offs.
You could make an "unlimited" suply of high quality lenses to replace broken ones, replace small pieces or even fix small cracks in space hatches. If you can make a glass table in situ you don't need to pack it. You can just pack a set of legs for a small table and made it extensible to fit a bigger surface later (Metallic spacial furniture should be printed as a mess of spongy filaments in any case to reduce weigth without losing resistence). And another important matherial that will be needed at some time is the optical fiber, of course.
I assume that heating sand to 1400 degree would be expensive but possible in a combustion chamber with modified pressure and all rockets have some kind of this.
The need to cool the melted glass fast to harden it should not be a problem in Mars. Just put it outside. And there is plenty of sand available.