It seems that mining Quartz is currently impossible from start, so Glass and eventually Flasks cannot be produced and science cannot ever be started
Currently the only three ways to get Quartz are
- through a quartz mine on a quartz deposit (requires Quartz Refining O3 for the mine, which requires science)
- through sand and an automated screener (requires steel to build, which requires science)
- through a crystal mine (which requires a soil extractor to build, which requires separation tech, hence science)
I feel like the latter is the intended way, using a burner version of the soil extractor instead of the higher tech equivalent, possibly
It is currently impossible to progress to red science/science pack 1, unless FNEI is missing something