No, it's not the launcher.

Search around these forums for "Crash on Deploy" and you'll likely find a solution.  If you're trying to play singleplayer, this is not currently supported and will give you exactly what you are experiencing.  There is a SP minimod stickied in the general forum you can download to try this out.  Otherwise, go into multiplayer and either join a server or create a local server.  Hope that helps.