Rockets are inefficient, by comparison to airplanes, because they have to carry both their fuel and their oxidizer. Thus the space shuttle main engines are powered by liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, fed from that gargantuan external fuel tank.
A Scramjet gets back to airplane-like economies by grabbing its oxygen from the atmosphere. It still needs to carry its own fuel, however; luckily for us, the atmosphere of our planet is not itself combustible.
In other words, Jamie's right, and Bob got a little carried away there. Don't worry, Bob, we won't tell your students--
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