colonial weapons (chip fabs and colony math)

1) chip fab in a box: who fixes it? It fixes itself, silly! My colonial
micro-machine shops come with a self-diagnostic DPU subsystem which can
temporarily control the nanofabricators to create repair parts and then
control the micromanipulators to install them.

2) colnies without educated people? Not from the NAC I think. I think if
you look at who might want to get off-earth, you may find a lot of
people who have valuable skills and want to craft a future for
themselves away from Big Brother and in a place where they can (instead
of being stuck in the technocratic middle class) aspire to real riches
as an important founder of the colony. I think there has historically
been sufficient numbers of these people to believe that colonies won't
have a problem with some basic equipment maintenance and repair. Sure,
you're main computer engineer may also double as an electrical engineer,
a guy who rebuilds electric motors, and the expert on transmission lines
and comms systems in a smaller outpost world. But the expertise is
likley to be there, especially given the cost of colony establishment.
No one will create colonies to fail - its probably to expensive!

3) colony math. Not saying this is right, but think on it. Ever play
Stars! Computer game? If so, you'll realize their growth model was an S
curve. For max growth, it was key to get your colonies out of the low
part of the S quickly. Some players setup small colonies, like the ones
I think you suggest, and then they slowly grew into sufficiency and the
faster middle part of the growth curve. Smarter players threw some more
resources out at the front end to drop critical mass colonies in place
ready-to-produce and ended up with much higher aggregate population and
economic growth rates. What does this suggest? That perhaps laying a
colony out with sufficient people and infrastructure at the front end,
within a 10 year period say, just makes sense - the returns come in
larger and sooner. So if a country is paying for the colony, bet that
such will be the strategy. If a group of people are trying to leave,
they may not be able to manage this so they get a slow-start colony. But
major countries/powers will probably try to get their colonies to hit
the ground running (unless they are strictly using them to bleed
political problem people or spare population, in which case they aren't
looking at them as value-return propositions). 

4) Brian's point about armament levels in colonies. Let us say I end up
on a world with flora, but not fauna. And the flora is abundant and not
terribly threatening. And the colonists are from a peaceable people. Are
they likely to be heavily armed? Nope. Of course, pirates and such will
still be a danger, so some arms will be present. Possibly private
security or intensive lobbying upon the parent government for adequate
protection may be a factor too. But not _all_ colonies will be bristling
with guns. I think the idea of a Quaker colony or an Amish colony is
pretty cool. I don't think these will be UberArmedCamps.