"Raymond Chuang" wrote in message
...
I remember one company is investigating something fairly similar by using
a
747 to tow a spaceplane to 40,000 feet then launching the spaceplane--it
will probably need a somewhat bigger propellant load and more powerful
rocket motors, but it still won't need the huge propellant load the Space
Shuttle now needs.
You seem to be under a false impression that space transportation system
that requires lots of propellant to get to orbit is a bad thing. The fact of
the matter is, amount of propellant, number of stages, degree of
reusability, launch method - all of them dont matter as long as the thing is
cheap enough and reliable enough.

-kert