No; but it - & its less ambitious Pioneer Rocketplane sibling - was more of the more plausible near term reusable booster concepts. Mid air refueling was a challenging double scissors around the fuel mass ratio but it's something which we know can be done (albeit only with really good pilots) & makes this concept pretty much the only one on the table which really requires a human payload; but the absence of any real market for a relatively expensive LEO booster made funding impossible.

(The margin for Rocketplane was only about US$6million in cf to Pegasus (it's most similar USAmerican competition), less for Soviet small boosters like Rockot & Satan & NEGATIVE per unit for constellation launches on big Soviet boosters like Zenit & Proton; & investors would have had to carry a development cost in the hundreds of US$millions simply to be in a position to make these small profits. With that kind of lousy cost/profit ratio, no same investor would touch it; especially when ITAR drove up insurance costs to the point where the insurance on new launchers became prohibitive.

(So next time you USAmericans hear a Republican congressman prat on about supporting space, remind them about ITAR & the massive increase in insurance premiuns it engendered...)

Similar thing did the funding in for Rotory, of course; but Rocketplane would have received valuable development money from NASA under the Bantam program if the space free-traders hadn't shut down that program in the Congress. Pity.

Robert