Comment by mapt

This doesn't work conceptually, but it's hard to explain without attaining a KSP baseline of understanding. https://xkcd.com/1356

"Clearing a path" is something you can do with a bulldozer through a traffic jam, but imagine clearing a path through a belt road by driving through the flow of moving traffic sideways at speed. Ultimately you can't hit every car in the outer lane with just one bulldozer, and the cars will close in and fill gaps because they're moving at slightly different speeds.

The easy elastic collisions you're imagining also just can't occur at these relative velocities. When something hits it looks more like an explosion than a "catch". If you shoot a local stone monument with high explosive artillery shells what happens? Does it reduce the number of things flying through the air or increase it?