What do you do with the bullet after you catch it as plasma?You can use it as reaction mass for an ion propulsion, thus not growing the ships mass. Use a few, slightly tilted, ion engines so that the beams won't interfere with the incoming bullets.
It's physically possible, but I believe we can't yet get the relevant velocities with railguns/coilguns. The articles I've seen on the current Navy railgun work talk about speeds of Mach 7 or so, which isn't that fast in space terms.Also, there are issues with the railguns being damaged by the firing, IIRC.Someday, it might be useful, but not near-term.(And a million-kilometer gauss gun sounds harder than reaching 10% of light speed with advanced fusion propulsion or laser-pushed lightsails.)
In the case of a magnetic bubble as a bullet catcher the dust/plasma goes to help maintain the bubble plasma which is a little leaky otherwise.
We could build a million killometer gauss gun to accelerate bullets at 10^6 m/s^2 and fire them at a starship. They could be magnetic and captured using magnetic field scoop. With s=10^9m and a=10^6, we get speed of bullets 4.5x10^7, which should be enough for the starship to reach 10% light speed.
It's physically possible, but I believe we can't yet get the relevant velocities with railguns/coilguns. The articles I've seen on the current Navy railgun work talk about speeds of Mach 7 or so, which isn't that fast in space terms.
The M2P2 doesn't work. In about 2005 several different researchers pointed out flaws in the plasma physics. The researchers couldn't answer the critics and let the idea die.Quote from: Stormbringer on 01/31/2016 07:31 amIn the case of a magnetic bubble as a bullet catcher the dust/plasma goes to help maintain the bubble plasma which is a little leaky otherwise.