Recoil being another term for mass. That force, applied to a mass, creates an acceleration, which when applied over time, changes the velocity of a mass. According to Newton's second law, the law of momentum -- changing the velocity of the mass changes its momentum, (mass multiplied by velocity). It is important to understand at this point that velocity is not simply speed. Velocity is the speed of a mass in a particular direction. In a very technical sense, speed is a scalar (mathematics), a magnitude, and velocity is a vector (physics), magnitude and direction. Newton's third law, known as conservation
Bussard ramjet to accelerate into the solar wind. However, in their calculations they assumed that: In the Zubrin/Andrews interplanetary ramjet design, they calculated that the drag force d/dt("mv") equals the mass of the scooped ions collected per second multiplied by the velocity of the scooped ions within the solar system relative to the ramscoop. The velocity of the (scooped) collected ions from the solar wind was assumed to be 500,000 m/s. The exhaust velocity of the ions when expelled by the ramjet was assumed not to exceed 100,000 m/s. The thrust of the ramjet d/dt("mv") was equal to the mass of ions