Concept: Ion railgun

[JMBuilder]

The "ion railgun" concept is almost identical to an ion engine. A noble gas is passed through a positive charger, then attracted to a negative charger and propelled with force. What if this was done repeatedly, sending the noble gas blasting out at incredible speeds and heat? Could this be weaponized somehow?

[Tommygun]

It sounds like you would end up with a less powerful particle cannon.

I would think the projectiles would ether need larger mass or higher speeds to do enough damage.

[K^2]

There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Look up what they use for ion acceleration at particle accelerator facilities. Particle accelerator really can be an efficient weapon in space warfare, but it's nothing particularly new. Means of defending a ship from such a weapons are also pretty well known.

[Rune]

They are pretty inefficient direct energy weapons. The problem is the beam quickly loses collimation: each ion repels the ones around it, so your "death ray" quickly becomes a "warm cloud" of ions spread over a huge area. Lasers are much more effective, and efficient.

Rune. And yeah, someone thought of it first.

[nyrath]

I know I'm being pedantic, but what the original poster is describing is an "ion coilgun", not an "ion railgun".

And Rune is absolutely right, it has been thought of before, and it has problems.