To be fair, those are three very long books, in my reading more about the people and how politics might play out in that situation with competing ideas and factions vying for power. My interpretation of the ending is not optimistic - they had to go to the stars to try again, but they did persevere in a way on Mars.

The automated robots and factories able to make copies of themselves by harvesting raw materials is not as far fetched as some speculative fiction (the jaunting in The Stars My Destination or instant transportation pads in Ringworld come to mind off the top of my head) but though conceptually I see the steps it is several technological leaps ahead of us at present.