RE: starship-design: Ramjet workings?

[TLG.van.der.Linden@tip.nl (Timothy van der Linden)]

Lee wrote,

>If you have magnetic fields capable of generating enough delta v to grab a
>fuel pellet moving that fast and drag it toward the axis of the engine (?) 
>in such a limited time, WHY are you bothering to fuse it? It sounds to me 
>like you already have your propulsion - the magnetic field itself. If it 
>can do what you say, then simply accelerate the pellet in the appropriate
>direction, the heck with trying to fuse it.

To accelerate the pellet one needs energy. The idea was that we would get
that energy by fusing the pellet. (Since this is a more or less beamed
design, there is no energy stored onboard.)

Timothy