Something tells me that there will be quite a few of these made for Christmas!!
(and a Star Trek fan likes to be called a "Trekker"!!)
Any way you slice it, it's a great pen!
Oh dear ... now we'll have that age-old argument about who's a trekkie and who's a trekker!
To be clear, one who likes the original series of Star Trek alone is a trekker, while those who like the other Star Trek shows, possibly with the addition of the original series, is termed a Trekkie...
And just to get even further off topic, those who are Star Wars fans through and through don't care if it's "expanded universe" or not, even if George Lucas said that those books and stories are no longer "canon" for his storyline, we still love it all!
So ... Kirinite Ice. Those are a little pricey, but still beautiful blanks! It may be best to hide the tube inside by replacing it with a Nickle or Chrome plated tube, which would generally just reflect the colors around it ... White or painted to match would be my second choice.
As for your issues concerning chipping .... if your acrylics are giving you issues like that, then don't bother trying to turn it to diameter ... get it close and then sand the rest of the way down to your target diameter!
I had issues with Kirinite getting chippy on me, and had some similar issues with some other acrylics. Strangely enough the Lava Silk blanks I've used before that look quite similar in the Kirinite Pearl never gave me that problem, but they don't have those in the "ice" patterning.
I do know that Kirinite Ice comes in Copper (yellow), Green, Deep Blue, Sky Blue, Amethyst (purple), and Magenta (red/pink) ... I could probably reinforce the red color by backpainting the tube a darker red, but I'ld probably leave the tube brass for the Copper, and use nickle on the rest.