Water is a little buoyant which may be part of the reason a lot of commerce happens on the waves.
- How much of a difference in terms of fuel would it make if the craft were launched from a water-body?
- Have all spacecraft to-date launched from land?
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2$\begingroup$ Sea Launch. I remember about a satellite launch from a Russian submarine. $\endgroup$– Deer HunterCommented Aug 25, 2013 at 9:27
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1$\begingroup$ Assuming you are asking about launch from a ship, part of your question is addressed at space.stackexchange.com/questions/744/… $\endgroup$– James JenkinsCommented Aug 25, 2013 at 9:32
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1$\begingroup$ Converted SLBM, such as Shtil $\endgroup$– user54Commented Aug 25, 2013 at 11:43
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3 Answers
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Spacecraft have been launched on Air, Land, and Sea.
Air Launch
The most popular of these is the Pegasus Rocket from Orbital. The airplane carrying the rocket goes up to ~40,000 ft, and fires off the rocket from below. These have carried a number of missions, including NASA, commercial, and other sources.
Sea Launch
The name of a company which launches such rockets. They utilized the Zenit-3SL rockets for all of their launches, and primarily launched GEO satellites from the equator, which reduces considerably the cost to launch a GEO sat, due to the fact that the inclination doesn't have to be removed.
answered Aug 25, 2013 at 12:07
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To add to the existing answers, this article describes a small satellite launched from a Russian submarine on a converted submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM). The satellite launched was called Kompass 2, and it was put into a ~ 400x480 km orbit at around 80 degrees inclination.
The Wikipedia article linked above describes another submarine-based launch in 1998, which placed two payloads into a 400x776 km orbit, again near 80 degrees inclination.
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There will not be a difference in fuel consumption unless the launch site is placed at high altitude (above sea level).
Thirty-one rockets have been assembled and launched so far, with three failures and one partial failure.
According to this site 6851 launches have been conducted by various nations using this technique.
