If you've ever looked at a history of space flight, or even proposals for new shuttle designs, this will be very familiar to you.  Since the 1920s,  the German Eugen Sanger had been playing around with the idea of hypersonic aircraft capable of leaping to the other side of the world at incredible speeds.  In 1942,he even proposed building an intercontinental bomber capable of flying at speeds of up to Mach 24 at the edge of space.  Basically, his idea was to use a large rocket plane to carry a smaller plane aloft, which would then be able to carry on farther and faster.  Lifting off from either an airfield or a catapult ramp. both planes would fly under complete control and both would be completely reusable. 

Since this is such a perfectly sensible and obvious arrangement, it has never been seriously applied to this day.

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