Sea Launch was a multinational—Norway, Russia, Ukraine, United States—spacecraft launch company founded in 1995 that provided orbital launch services from 1999 to 2014. The company used a mobile maritime launch platform for equatorial launches of commercial payloads on specialized Zenit-3SL rockets from a former mobile/floating oil drilling rig renamed Odyssey.
A launch of Zenit-3SL rocket from the Sea Launch platform Ocean Odyssey
Sea Launch launch platform Ocean Odyssey
The Sea Launch NSS-8 launch explosion on January 30, 2007. The explosion has obscured the floating launch pad platform.
Sea Launch command ship Sea Launch Commander
A launch pad is an above-ground facility from which a rocket-powered missile or space vehicle is vertically launched. The term launch pad can be used to describe just the central launch platform, or the entire complex. The entire complex will include a launch mount or launch platform to physically support the vehicle, a service structure with umbilicals, and the infrastructure required to provide propellants, cryogenic fluids, electrical power, communications, telemetry, rocket assembly, payload processing, storage facilities for propellants and gases, equipment, access roads, and drainage.
Launch pad at Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39B on Merritt Island, Florida
Transport of Soyuz rocket to pad by train
Transport of Space Shuttle and MLP to pad on Crawler-transporter
SLC-40 with SpaceX Falcon 9 launch infrastructure. The four towers surrounding the rocket are lightning arresters, and acts like a giant Faraday cage