It wouldn’t help much, sadly. Getting to orbit is about speed, not height — you need 27000 kph to get to orbit, and having an air launched platform would shave off 1k kph off it at most, perhaps 5k with some insane hypersonic engineering.

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m4rtink 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Main advantage of air launch is that you can better match your target inclination or perhaps even orbit timing - just drop the rocket at the right time in the right direction over the ocean. With a fixed launch site you always need to adjust for some difference of your point of origin versus the orbit you want to achieve.

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kjkjadksj an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How big a trebuchet would be needed to chuck a cubesat directly into LEO?

	▲	00N8 a minute ago \| parent [-]
		100 or 200 km tall at point of release ought to do it.

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bruckie 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It helps a bit more than you imply, though: if you can launch from a higher altitude, you have less atmosphere to plow through. That lets you use more of your propellant to speed up instead of to push air out of the way.

	▲	notahacker 5 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		You've just got the problem of building a fixed wing aircraft which can carry your rocket full of explosive propellant, successfully release it pointing in the right direction and then get the hell out of the way....
	▲	Rover222 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		You're extremely limited by the amount of mass you can even launch from a mothership aircraft. There's no future in this idea outside of small sat, and probably not even there.