Recoil and Rail Guns

Question: Do magnetically powered "rail guns" recoil less?
---------------------------------------
No.  No kind of gun can be truly recoil less.  Newton's third 
law, the conservation of momentum, guarantees this.  Even a laser has some 
recoil, since photons have momentum.  In the rail gun, the momentum given to 
the projectile must be matched by the momentum given to the "stationary" part 
of the gun.  If the gun is firmly anchored, this momentum is given to the 
entire mass of the planet and you will not see much recoil.  But the force on 
the gun during the launch will be quite high, equal to the force on the 
projectile.
=====================================================