From reading recoils on railguns, I do not think the bulk of the force will react in conventional momentum conversion.
http://www.df.lth.se/~snorkelf/Longi...ml#LorentzRail
Quote:
Railgun recoil
Railguns were of interest in the 80s SDI-program. Today, interest in electromagnetic launching has revived in NASA's plans for a new kind of a space-shuttle. A railgun consists of two parallel bars and a transverse rod, the sleigh, Figure 2.7A. When a current is passed through the circuit the sleigh is accelerated due to the Lorentz forces (the conduction electrons in the sleigh move in the magnetic field from the bars). As can be seen, Figure 2.7B, these forces are strongest in the corner regions, and directed at right angles to the conductor, i.e. they are transverse. The recoil forces were expected to be seated in the rear, section III in Figure 2.7B. But recoil forces were also observed in the rails, the arrows in Figure 2.7A, pushing the rails back and thus deforming them. Some experimenters observed plastic deformation of the rails [5]. Others reported severe friction losses, which could be generated by transient bucking of the rails.
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If you look at figure 2.7b the force is evenly spread at in all 4 directions.