From: adam.w.krajewski@gmail.com   
      
   Wow, Mr Campbell, I never expected to be answered by somebody so important to   
   hard sf community!    
      
   "You need to know how dense the plasma is to estimate effects.  Solid tungsten   
   is about 20 g/cm^3.  That would give your bolt a mass of about 200 g (so   
   either your magazine is very heavy, or you only get a few shots)."   
      
   Huh, my dimensions are kinda too big, it's more like firing a big rod from a   
   cannon now :D   
   So for now, I give the projectile mass of 0.5 g, which at 200 km/s is 10000000   
   Joules if my calculations are ok, so it's around two kilograms of TNT coming   
   at your face. I don't remember how to calculate all of the quantities with   
   recoil, I don't    
   remember anything after my holidays, so could you help me with this?    
   I know the full idea of plasma weapons, non existent fields keeping them in   
   place is *dumb* in most places, but you know, they are just nice ;>    
   Also, do you know about experiments with containing plasma in open air? The   
   first one I know about is the MARAUDER, US project for anti missile plasma   
   cannon, from whai know failure, and second is not so old, I recall watching a   
   video of 1 foot plasma    
   ring in free air, I don't know where did I see this, it was from 2010 at most.   
   Anyway, it's best to just launch a normal metal bullet from what you say...   
      
   [description of this exact plasma weapon]   
   Imagine something looking like oversized pistol, with long barrel and folding   
   stock, when stock is folded, it looks like small PDW.   
   Feeding: magazine attached from the side probably a drum containing small, 4   
   mm diameter and lenght of 12 mm cartridges, with 10 mm of it being something   
   that makes from small 2x4 plate plasma. Any ideas what can it be? Could there   
   be metastable    
   propellant (metallic hydrogen, meta helium), or it must be small antimatter   
   bomb? :D    
   Sorry for my broken English also, if this is a problem ;)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)