Just install a programmable brain into a ship, which then becomes a drone! It would make a lot more sense than cloning a pilot hundreds of times!
This has already been achieved IRL, though not with the memory transfer. The ‘solo brain’ has to learn / re-learn how do do x and y and needs nutrients to live.
Simple memory transfer would create 2 separate human beings that look alike and share their past virtually, but will act different from the point of cloning as they experience things from different angles, stress levels, fatigue and so on.
Conciousness transfer is the one where one being moves from a body to another and remains the same individual. It’s questionable what happens / could happen / should happen to the old body.
So yea, it depends on what type of cloning people talk 
But, this was the final chapter? That was a little short 