[trogg]

Yep, Dirk Rutan (and his team) are definately visionaries.
It was only a couple of years ago that one of his ungainly designs flew around the world without refueling (non stop of course).

I once read an interview with John Lear (Junior?) (son of the guy that invented the Lear Jet and the 8 track cassette tape) where he was saying that in his time in Black Ops they were launching rockets from the belly of a converted Lockhead Tristar passenger plane (a bit like the 3 engined Douglas DC10 for the non plane people).
I cant remember fully (as I read the interview several years ago) but I think the reasoning was that a 'passenger' plane could launch a spy satallite without the ememy (who would be watching places like Cape Caneveral) realising it.

I am just glad that this is being done for peaceful reasons unlike the major advances made in World War 2. Some of the German scientists had some fantastic ideas but unfortunately they had sinister applications, for example, the V1 rocket was eventually developed after the war into the NASA rockets like the Saturn V... the motor of the V2 flying bomb uses a principle which is currently being developed into the pulse/ram jet engines which are set to be the next advance in supersonic aircraft... and these are just a couple.