And even if you can handwave a way to hold a plasma together at the density of steel for the whole trip, it really doesn't add much to the damage done. Conversion of kinetic energy dominates the yield.

On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 7:59 PM, Tim <tim@little-possums.net> wrote:
On Tue, Jul 07, 2015 at 10:16:00PM -0400, Kurt Feltenberger wrote:
> So it would be theoretically possible for the projectile mass to be
> converted to plasma during the "firing" process and then travel at
> 100km/s or even 1000km/s?

Certainly.  The only problem is that by the time it has travelled for
one second, it may be 100 km from the firing ship but spread out over
a region 10 km across.  It's likely to deliver a scorching impact when
even 1% of it hits a ship a kilometre across, but nowhere near as
likely to penetrate armour anywhere.


- Tim
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Craig Berry (http://google.com/+CraigBerry)
"Eternity is in love with the productions of time." - William Blake