Die Krise im Weltraumbahnhof belebt das Interesse an einem seegestützten Start

I worked on the Sea Launch project mentioned in the article. If you have seen Captain America, the Winter Soldier, they used the Command/Support ship from that project in the early fight scenes.

The project used a converted offshore drilling platform to launch Zenit 3SL rockets from a near-equatorial Pacific Ocean location. The Port of Long Beach, CA was the home port. The ship was custom built to deliver the rockets to the platform, and the platform had sufficient storage space for the liquid oxygen and RP1 fuel used by the rocket.

It turns out a rocket designed to be launched from the steppes of Kazakhstan (Baikonur) doesn’t work that well in the marine environment. The program suffered 4 failures in 36 launches.

As far as sea launch in general, the Gulf and Atlantic coasts of the US have large areas with very gentle sea-floor slopes. So you can go a number of miles offshore and still build on pilings or structures resting on the sea floor. That simplifies things since you don’t have to deal with wave action of the platform.