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There are clamps in the launch pad that hold the rocket down.

This is easier then one would think because the rocket is fuelled and the engines already have a hard time living the rocket at all.

They use the same launch pad during launch and the clamps only release when the computer has made sure all engines have correctly stared and are running correctly.

Check out the video from RocketLab when they had a launch abort to see a example of this.



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