If the rail gun rounds are fast enough to hit anything at 10 000 km, they have to be very small (like gravel) so an added explosion is unlikely to add much damage.
If the rail gun rounds are fast enough to hit anything at 10 000 km, they have to be very small (like gravel) so an added explosion is unlikely to add much damage.
Such a large projectile would require massive amounts of power to accelerate to usable speeds.
And at less than frac-c speeds it will have severe problems hitting manoeuvring targets at more than Close range.
A small mass driver bay uses 15 Power. 15 Power for 360 s is roughly 15 × 10 MW × 360 s = 54 GJ.
A 10 kg mass accelerated with 50 GJ has a speed of 100 km/s.
It would be basically unable to hit anything at Short range.
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