Silver also has rather strong anti-microbial properties.

"Reliable" in nuclear technology means something very different from "reliable" in space, not least because the failure modes are different.

If a Falcon Heavy with ordinary cargo fails, a few fish will die on impact, but otherwise the damage to the ocean and the atmosphere is not that great and lasting.

"Seeding around" tons of nuclear waste into the atmosphere and into the ocean water would be a major disaster. This stuff will circulate for decades or even thousands of years, depending on its half-time.

There may be, tentatively, such a correlation in mammals, but as you say, certain birds are already very much a counterexample.

It was even worse than that. Some of the Jews settled in Germany were citizens of other countries (Poland, Lithuania etc.), which were nevertheless anti-Semitic enough to either deny them passports outright or at least tarry when issuing them. So even if you wanted to move out of Germany, you would lack the necessary papers to cross the border.

During the biggest crisis of this type, Poland refused to accept many thousands of its own citizens expelled by Germany, who were forced to stay in no-man's land at the border for months.

>because success in war could determine their advancement or even survival

It was also prestigious to have a well-equipped unit, much like it is prestigious to have a Mercedes today. So there was a kind of competition between the wealthy in this regard.

(Not only in this regard. House slaves from rich households often wore so lavish garments that there were legal attempts to get this under control; the nominally poor, but free Roman citizens resented meeting well-dressed slaves in the streets.)

Getting useful materials from a planet with significant gravitation to space proper is inefficient. You will spend a lot of energy for the cargo just to reach the escape velocity.

Asteroids are much more promising in this regard, at least until we need to build structures of yet unprecedented size.

Also, terrestrial planets have a problem: the most interesting stuff is mostly located in the core (various metals), and it would take a lot of "stripping" of the outer layers to reach that core. With asteroids, you don't have to dig too deep.

TBH importing Californian governance standards to Mars would ensure that the local desert would turn drier. Just leave them where they are.

I photoed it yesterday as well. Nice that even mobile camera can discern the fact that Jupiter appears as a disk of almost one angular minute in diameter.

Mine too, as you can see.

I also recommend reading something by Václav Smil. He devotes a lot of effort to show that civilization is energy and vice versa.

He is not as fun to read like Bret Devereaux is, though. Much drier style.