[META] [RFC] Militarization around the 2022 period

[Ace Dreamer]

This is a non-military, unarmed, vehicle:

http://www.fenspace.net/index.php5?title=SS_Kame

but the fact that it is a Space Vessel, owned by a private individual, is by default invisible and has nested defences designed to make it nearly invulnerable, is, I'm sure, going to upset some people.

I must admit I DO NOT LIKE this vessel at all (from a meta perspective).

1) "Brain built it" ? Sorry, this thing is much too large to be built by a single person, even with some preparation time. Do you have any clue how large this thing is? 10 times larger than a todays US supercarrier? 20 times? More?

Assuming I haven't botched my calculations it looks do-able.  He knows he can't build it, directly, himself, it took a long time for his tractor-trailer sized vehicle, which is far, far, smaller.  Hence, construction robots, run by temporary partial mental clones of his mind - he, personally, will not be able to remember building the ship, just read notes on problems he needs to sort out.  Brains can't do (full) non-destructive copies of his own mind, and he certainly doesn't have a way to (directly) incorporate experiences of his 'mind clones' into his own experience.
In creating his golem stand-in, 'Brainless', he effectively took a copy of his memories and a partial copy of his skills.  The mind amplifier takes an unstable partial copy of his experience and a full copy of his skills, then runs a lot of these in parallel, driving construction mechs.  He can get quite a lot of work done in their lifespan of about 48hrs, and he thinks this is ethically sound as he is arguably doing it to himself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiln_People
The mind amplifier comes out of research he's done on backing-up the minds of robots, so they're safer, and how they control multiple remotes (which isn't quite the conventional AI brute force task-switching).

2) The cloak. Your original personal cloaks were "optical only"... that
was powerful, but balanced. But suddenly Brain builds the "perfect
anything, noone can see it cloak"? I would say thats a little bit too
much "cool" in a single ship.

No, the original vehicle cloaks were always radar as well as optical - they have to be to used the UK air space.  They don't mimic the radar background, they just absorb.  It isn't a perfect cloak, but in space where there is no rain or clouds to give you problems, and most people are relying on radar reflections or stray emissions, yes, it is very good.  If it makes the mistake of moving between a radar set and something being painted by that radar, or in the way of a transmission being received (radio telescope?), there's a moving 'hole', and an AI will likely be able to work out the shape and speed.  And, every so often they have to dump the absorbed energy.

3) The "switch off enemies engines" weapon... sorry, NO WAY. If you say
Brain has it, I will pretend it doesn't work on Fusors and CI energy
crystals. This thing would be the most dangerous weapon systems in
Fenspace, making every enemy helpless in a single shot.

It doesn't work on power storage devices, just on power generators.  And, not all of them at that.  It will definitely work on uranium and thorium fission, and conventional high temperature fusion.  And the Lensman power generation systems.  It is also only short range, and only works while the generator is within the beam.  A tractor-suppress technique probably works best.  Followed by a presser 'throw-away', and hope the attacker doesn't have fast generator re-start, and pounds you from out of tractor range.

The other things seem to be okay... as everyone else, Brain has his way
to produce "damned tough armor"... It has forcefields, which is not
common in 2014 but okay... even the tractor beams would be something
unusual...

One last comment, did you used the wrong picture? A mauler does not look like a Trek-style Enterprise... ^^

A mauler has to have force fields and tractor beams, or it isn't a mauler - you could also argue that the lack of weapons means it isn't a mauler, but handwavium is generally more understanding about that.
If you want to have a picture of an invisible ship...  The 'Turtle' cos-plays as the 'Enterprise', and maybe as 'Thunderbird 2' while doing disaster relief.  Because he doesn't trust the force fields Brains has an ultra-material hull underneath them.

(edit)

There are really good reasons Brains doesn't hand-out the
handwavium and processes he uses to make ultra-materials. He's got
related processes for the equivalent of battlesteel that he does
hand-out. It's possible he may release the ultra-material stuff, some
time in the future.

Nearly everyone has his own strains of "armor up" handwavium... so this one is not really something special.

It all really comes out of Brains model work, using mylar, and some aerogel, and his second 'Bootstrap' attempt.
--
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind