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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Benjamin Olson" data-source="post: 8339961" data-attributes="member: 6988941">The basic problem with scaling up is that the further you want to send a given mass up from Earth the amount of fuel you need increases exponentially because the fuel itself is so much of the weight of the craft and you need to propel the weight of all the additional fuel you need to propel the weight of all the additional fuel you need to propel the etc. A rocketplane launched off of another plane is limited in size by what airplanes are available. This method also involves the rocketplane spacecraft making a very high speed turn upwards while still in the atmosphere, which puts a lot of stress on it (and its contents, including people) and means it has to be a fairly hardy thing (especially if you want it to be reusable longterm). I don't have any particular knowledge of the numbers, but I would guesstimate from the fact that it took Virgin Orbit a Boeing 747, one of the heavier lifting planes commercially available, to support a spacecraft of a scale capable of getting just a 440 pound payload into orbit, that it would take a hitherto unknown scale of aircraft to support, say, getting people into orbit from an air launch without some other radical advance in technology.My earlier comment did trivialize the degree to which this method could be used for unmanned satellites, which are actually our main useful business in space these days. The Virgin Orbit satellite launching company may have a bright future. But in terms of the manned "space travel" of sister company Virgin Galactic, the method they have invested all their efforts into seems to be limited to silly "x-treme" experiences in low space, at least for the foreseeable future.</blockquote>

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