Their approach of strapping a booster to a plane always seemed misguided to me. If the first step in designing a new rocket is to also design a new airplane, an

Their approach of strapping a booster to a plane always seemed misguided to me. If the first step in designing a new rocket is to also design a new airplane, and the largest in the world at that, then I think you are throwing money and engineering time away. You now have _two_ really hard problems to solve instead of one. But I have to say that after seeing what SpaceX has done I am now much more positive and supportive about moonshot ideas instead of being dismissive. So, at any rate, kudos to Stratolaunch!