Get the latest tech news
The dream of offshore rocket launches is finally blasting off
Sea-based launches are hitting their stride. That could lead to a lot more space missions with a lot less red tape.
The first large rocket to take off from sea was a V2, the notorious missile developed by Germany in World War II and subsequently adopted by the United States, which the US Navy launched from the aircraft carrier USS Midway south of Bermuda on September 6, 1947. For these reasons, rockets have intermittently lifted off from sea for nearly 60 years, beginning with Italy's Luigi Broglio Malindi Space Center, a retrofitted oil rig off the coast of Kenya that launched orbital missions from the 1960s to the 1980s and may soon reopen after a nearly 40-year hiatus. Boeing, which managed Sea Launch, was fined $10 million in 1998 by the US Department of State for allegedly sharing information about American defense technology with its foreign partners in violation of the Arms Export Control Act.
Or read this on Hacker News