What an embarrassingly (for him) short sighted 'walk through'. Just having more capability to perform ariel launches will encourage companies to make vehicles. The likely reason nothing exists today is because there really aren't any options today..
> Who is going to pay for companies to develop these vehicles?
VCs and other investors who see a company that wants to build these vehicles for cheaper launches? I don't really understand the point you are trying to make. Yes, it's expensive to build X, but usually $Y motivates people/companies to invest in the initial costs to cover building X because the payoff, $Y, will be greater than the cost. The news here is that the initial cost is potentially MUCH lower because now they can use this airplane as a stage 1 and not have to develop their own.
> VCs and other investors who see a company that wants to build these vehicles for cheaper launches?
So, a currently non-existant SpaceX 'competitor' that wants to hitch itself to the success or failure of Stratolaunch?
That's an incredibly sketchy business to build. You'll be sinking a billion or five dollars before you have any hope of seeing a cent of revenue, and then having an unknown probability of discovering that reusable rockets will eat your financial launch.
Right now, $X is measured in the billions, $Y is anywhere between 0 and billions, and there's a %Z chance (Which is probably over 50%) that your complement product (Stratolaunch) will die before you get a cent of revenue.
