This has nothing on Gerry Anderson's "UFO", which had a submarine space launch vehicle. The rocket sat on the end of the submarine as it wriggled its way under the sea. The concept was absolutely ridiculous. The submarine was crewed by men and women who wore string vests that were painted silver. It was filmed in the late 1960s, and set in the year 1981; the portrayal of 1981 was so accurate that people today could use it as a historical document of 1981.

I choose Paris Hilton as my avatar, because her hair goes purple when she visits the moon.

"unusually cold sea temperatures"...hmmmm.

Darn that Global Warming! They'd better be careful, or Algoreans will have them burned as heretics for showing facts that don't fit their self-advancement agenda.

Spot on!

Now that is what I call a concise piece, or em.... something..

The Sea Launch approach always seemed over engineered to me. Aranuka atoll (Kiribati) is just 12 km off the equator. If one launched from near there, one could drop the launch-platform's anchor and thus wouldn't have to burn fuel trying to keep stationary against a current.

And, yeah, I thought of this later on - if the satellite was launched from beneath the surface of the sea, there wouldn't be a problem with storms. That's an excellent idea, and I am surprised that Sea Launch hasn't thought of it yet. There may be some technical challenges, but this is the twenty-first century after all.

Yeah, UFO FTW. Can't beat Peter Gordeno and his string-vest submarine. Best bit was that it split just between the words "sky" and "diver" written on the outside of the plane/sub amalgam. So obviously you only ever saw the left hand side of the vehicle else the words woulda been the wrong way round. Brilliant!

@Ever hear of an anchor.

I worked on the design of the Command Ship and the conversion of the Ocean Oddesey from oil drilling rig in Aberdeen, Scotland.

The point about launching from the middle of the ocean, rather than anchored off an island is that you don't have to worry too much about the hospital bills should the rocket explode over said island.

They light the blue touch paper and hop aboard the Command Ship to retire just over the horizon where they can safely watch the show from the various hospitality suites on board.