Wiktionary
n. (context science fiction English) A proposed space travel technology using enormous electromagnetic fields as a scoop to collect and compress hydrogen and trigger thermonuclear fusion, thus powering the vessel.
Usage examples of "ramscoop".
The Kzin knew much about relativity weapons, anti-matter, neutron bombs, gravity planers, heat induction and now, as a result of contact with humans, the lethal properties of ramscoop fields and reaction drives in general.
Under conventional ramscoop drive at first, then using bootstrapping again as the memory of pain dulled a little, the ships headed for 4408AB Trianguli, a promising "wide" binary with two possible stars.
An ancient ramscoop wallowing along through space and time (a lot of time, that duck-billed platypus of the spaceways!
It was easy to forget that this was illusion—that in deceleration mode, with the tethered tree straining forward and a torrent of hadronic photons aimed along the probe's axis through the focus of the sheltering ramscoop fields, the scene rushing toward him was actually beneath his feet.
Ezr Vinh’s parents and his two aunts owned about one-third of the expedition: two ramscoops and three landing craft.
But even the most terrible error probably wouldn’t kill anyone—there were still the bactries on the ramscoops, all kept in isolation from one another.
Instead of trickling in over a decade or two, five thousand ramscoops from more than three hundred worlds were falling inward toward the Namqem system, all to arrive within an Msec of one another.
Here and there across this galaxy we see ramscoops and ancient radio transmissions.
Without depot civilizations in between, your ramscoops will fail in less than a thousand years.
Even from here, she could see Gaijin flower-ships circling the planet, the giant ramscoops of the alien craft visible as tiny discs.
Gaijin ships orbited Earth, tracking from pole to pole, their ramscoops casting golden light that glimmered from the ice and the oceans, mapping and studying, still following their own immense, patient projects.
They made a sweep too fast for the outsiders to dodge, but it was the ramscoops that saved us.
If they had been bottom luggers, ships with ramscoops, they could close the gap in less than fifty years.