Newbie questions at turn ~50 of a PBW game

[MegaTrain]

I've been reading the forums and strategy guides, but there are a couple of issues I'm still not sure about.

1. Racial traits:
Can't be traded to other races? Or are we just not doing it right?

2. Mines:
I got mine-happy right after I researched the tech, and made nearly all my shipyards build a couple of turns worth of mines. I figured, "Hey, they're not doing anything in the cargo hold, let's launch them and I can have a mine layer come by and pick them up later." I just blew it, right? No way to recover a mine once it's launched into space?

3. Building expensive stuff:
Just researched some planet making and warp closing techs, but 2.4 years to build a ship??!! And this is a minimum-loaded engines and technology science frigate. I know I can research ship yards II and III, (jeez, those are expensive), and can load my key planets full to increase the production rate, but any other tips for building expensive stuff? (No I can't have temporal shipyards.) How about a base with a shipyard facility at the same location? Would they share the load on a single building project?

[Rant] And what the heck is it with these descending-sort forums? They're impossible to read a long thread without doing a stutter-step scroll. Pain in the a** [/Rant]

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-MegaTrain-
Athlon 1.3 GHz running at 1.6 GHz on an iWill KK266