This is quite funny, I actually thought of a very similar concept fairly recently. Although without VTOL or rendezvous, I was rather thinking about how you could take maximum advantage of the fact that battery powered aircraft don't need oxygen by flying efficiently at very high altitudes. Since just the climb would require lots of energy and power it seemed reasonable to have a "climb module" that could then detach and return to base while the cruise part of aircraft continues to it's destination.

This concept seems a bit insane though since it needs aerial rendezvous. Doing that reliably in anything but perfect weather would be quite challenging to put it mildly.

Not for me, thanks. Twice the number of systems for twice the range. A lot of moving parts....

Absolutely fascinating concept. Never would have thought of this myself. Too engrained in old ways I guess.

@Vincent, no worries, you may prefer simpler and safer systems. some engineers need these concepts to get to a practical solution. It is easy to make life (or technology) complicated, but it is difficult to make it simple. At the end the market will go for a simple solution as this one likely will be more reliable and cheaper. These engineers - facing the insufficiency of battery power in eVTOLs - ADD COMPLEXITY with the absolutely need of an in-air-rendevouz... Please engineers, get back to simple and practical solutions and then they will be affordable, light and therefore more eco-friendly!

Very nifty. Just a bit surprised Gerry Anderson never thought of it. ;-)

Interesting concept, I hate to add more complexity but the launch vehicle could have a power tether?

This configuration of a mothership and a cruise vehicle essentially copies the WhiteKnight/SpaceShip setup that Scaled Composites (in partnership with Paul Allen) used to win the Ansari XPrize. Seems to me that it would be appropriate in this article give a nod to Scaled (beyond mentioning the one person on the Talyn team who formerly worked at Scaled) and specifically to Burt Rutan. Or maybe the editors were thinking: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so why mention the phenomenal precedent project by Scaled? All of the insiders will understand, anyway. Right?

Imagine we's spent the last century developing flying machines driven by a power source with an energy density typically of 200 - 300 kWh per kilogram and someone came up with a power source that yielded 12,000 - 13,000 kWh per kilogram (twice that actually, as running it full to empty means it only carries half its total fuel on average).
What a break-through that would be!

Like I'm sure others have envisioned, my version from a decade was just to have a lifter connected via a power cable to the ground. No batteries needed at all

What we need is an airport, by that I mean a port in the air.
It can be a giant airship, winching a plane vertically and dropping it. As the plane gathers momentum, it will come out of the dive into horizontal flight. How do it lands? Just as simple, it flies below the ‘air port’ and climb up while throttling down. A grabber on the port will catch the hovering plane by the nose. The nose might have a electric inducted magnetic loop or something to grab hold of. Propellers are on wing or pusher on the rear, it cannot be on the nose. The plane can then be gently lowered to the ground.