Title text:
It does come at the cost of some launchpad expansions and increased fuel requirements, but that all comes out of the facility’s budget.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3291/


air launch is dumb. it provides almost no benefit from a deltaV perspective while dramatically increasing the engineering cost and complexity of the launch system. just because people are working on it doesnt mean its going to be useful or practical or even work. even if it does eventually work for someone someday it wont be worth the effort or cost. theyll cancel it after a few launches or go out of business because no one can afford their overpriced copium machine.