Short answers, pulled from the story.
Louis-Nicolas Vauquelin announced the discovery of a new earth from emerald and beryl in 1798. Friedrich Wöhler first used the name beryllium in 1828 after independently isolating the metal alongside Antoine Bussy.
Natural beryllium consists almost entirely of the stable isotope beryllium-9 which has a nuclear spin of minus one-half. This specific isotope acts as both a neutron reflector and a neutron moderator depending on the purity and size of its crystallites.
The United States, China, and Kazakhstan remain the only three countries involved in industrial-scale extraction of beryllium today. Most production comes from the mineral beryl which must be sintered using an extraction agent or melted into a soluble mixture.
Chronic beryllium disease often called berylliosis is a fatal pulmonary condition caused by inhaling dust or fumes contaminated with beryllium. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration set a permissible exposure limit of 0.2 micrograms per cubic meter as an eight-hour time-weighted average.
Beryllium's low density combined with high flexural rigidity makes it ideal for lightweight structural components in spacecraft and missiles. The James Webb Space Telescope utilizes eighteen hexagonal sections made of beryllium for its mirrors each plated with a thin layer of gold to handle extreme cold down to 33 Kelvin without deforming like glass would.