New Scientist is carrying this article providing some details of what appear to be a developing proposal for CEV system, NASA's shuttle replacement. This take: launch the main CEV on a big horking rocket, then launch the crew on a much smaller air-launched vehicle. This should simplify "man rating" the parts that hold the crew, while still allowing existing heavy-lift rockets to be used to put the big stuff in orbit. The problem: the company behind the air-launch component, Airlaunch LLC, would need to scale up their prototype system a great deal to boost a meaningful payload, and their launch aircraft would need to scale up to match.

Still, good to see movement on this project, from all fronts.