Terrence Fugate wrote:

>  Wouldn't there enough abandoned military stuff to either salvage the
> motors, reactors and, if nothing else, salvage the metal to make new
> parts?

The reactor that powered Merlin went down, as I recall. Yes, the fuel
was replaced to restore it to life.

Circuit boards don't operate indefinitely. Refrigerators stop working
(coolant leaks). Radios don't communicate.

Medical supplies have a limited useful life.

Decades of neglect of sophisticated equipment left by the military. Dust
blows in. Capacitors short out.

Poictesme is an agricultural planet. It isn't an industrial center.

>  I've only been on 3 active military bases here in the USA, all had
> nice machine shops, I'd expect machine shops there to be combination
> machine and electric shops that could build almost anything from raw
> metal.

Raw metal, yes. Can a machine shop create a vacuum tube? How about a
D-cell battery?