Low-Cost Space Launches, Cont'd

 Read this excellent piece at PJ Media about the future of space flight. Here's a snippet to entice you:

 'Air launch is not a new concept — as former NASA administrator Mike Griffin, who is on the new venture’s board of directors, pointed out. It goes back over sixty years to Chuck Yeager’s flight of the X-1 in 1947 that first successfully flew supersonic after being released from the bomb bay of a B-29. It was followed by the space-bound (though only suborbital) X-15s in the fifties and sixties that were dropped from a B-52 bomber, and an anti-satellite rocket was developed that was designed to launch from an F-15 fighter. Since the 1980s, Orbital Science Corporation has been launching the solid-fueled Pegasus launcher (another design by Rutan) from under the wing of a modified Lockheed L-1011 Tristar, delivering about a thousand pounds to orbit. But this will be by far the largest space vehicle ever launched from an aircraft: about half a million pounds, with an orbital payload capability of several tons.'