James Dean

FLORIDA TODAY

Watching video of a SpaceX rocket’s spectacular explosion during a practice countdown Thursday, former NASA astronaut Michael Lopez-Alegria immediately wondered: Could a crew have survived that?

SpaceX is preparing to fly astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA, and believed it was within a year of launching a two-person test flight.

The company’s Dragon spacecraft now under development will be equipped with an abort system designed to push crews away from a rocket failing on the pad or in-flight.

“The question is, would the escape system be able to react in time?” said Lopez-Alegria. “It happened just like that, but it’s possible the system could have detected what was going on and taken the crew to safety. That’s the hope, right?”

No one was injured in the incident at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station that obliterated the two-stage Falcon 9 and a $200 million commercial satellite, which occurred about eight minutes before a planned test-firing of the booster engines, while the rocket was being fueled.

But the fireballs and blasts were eye-opening reminders of the danger of rocket flight generally, and of the higher stakes to come once astronauts climb on top of Falcon 9s.

SpaceX on Friday evening said in a statement that it had immediately begun an investigation, overseen by the Federal Aviation Administration, reviewing about 3,000 channels of telemetry and video and focused on a moment lasting no more than 55 milliseconds.

Launch Complex 40 "clearly incurred damage," but how much was still being determined. The company said another pad it has been renovating at nearby Kennedy Space Center, 39A, could be ready to support launches in November.

SpaceX Falcon 9 explosion one of many Florida launch failures

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, satellite destroyed in explosion

“Our number one priority is to safely and reliably return to flight for our customers, and we will carefully investigate and address this issue," said SpaceX President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell. "We are grateful for the continued support that our customers have expressed to us."

Whatever went wrong, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that a Dragon capsule's abort system would done its job under the same conditions, saving astronauts or cargo.

“This seems instant from a human perspective, but it really a fast fire, not an explosion,” he said on Twitter. “Dragon would have been fine.”

NASA presumably will take pains to verify Musk’s conclusion before certifying that the Falcon 9 and Dragon are safe to fly its crews, probably in 2018.

SpaceX last year demonstrated the Dragon’s abort system under controlled conditions with no rocket involved. A prototype capsule fired thrusters to rocket from a pad before deploying parachutes and splashing down near Cape Canaveral.

In addition to SpaceX, NASA has partnered with Boeing to resume astronaut launches from the Space Coast after the space shuttle’s 2011 retirement. Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner capsule, flying atop United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V rocket, plans to test an abort system before a manned test flight early in 2018.

"Those systems must be proven in flight tests before NASA will certify them for missions carrying astronauts," NASA said in a statement to FLORIDA TODAY. "SpaceX tested its launch abort system from the pad successfully in May 2015. Both SpaceX and Boeing plan to further test launch-abort systems in 2017."

But even before Thursday’s failure on the launch pad, NASA was evaluating the risk of having astronauts strapped into Dragons while the rockets below them are being fueled.

SpaceX waits until a countdown's final half-hour to fuel the latest version of its Falcon 9. The late fuel-loading ensures super-chilled liquid oxygen doesn’t have time to warm up inside propellant tanks, which would limit the rocket’s performance.

ULA’s Atlas V rocket, in contrast, will be fueled before astronauts board Boeing Starliners.

During a July meeting of the NASA Advisory Council, Lopez-Alegria, a member of the council's Human Exploration and Operations Committee and former president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, asked NASA officials if they were comfortable with SpaceX’s new fueling procedure.

“I think we are getting more comfortable with it, but we are not yet ready to say we’re good,” replied Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA headquarters. “We’re still working through that.”

That issue is sure to receive more scrutiny now.

Titusville rattled by unexpected SpaceX rocket explosion

Rocket fueling is an obviously hazardous operation for which launch pads typically are cleared, as Launch Complex 40 was on Thursday.

“You don’t want to risk anybody being in a hazardous environment when you don’t have to,” recalled Mike Leinbach, a retired shuttle launch director. “At some point, you’re going to put the astronauts and probably the ground crew into an environment where there are hazards involved. You cannot avoid that, or you don’t fly in space.”

Lopez-Alegria who flew the shuttle three times and Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft, said the danger hit home on the days he arrived at fully fueled shuttles at Kennedy Space Center, a very different experience from when the fuel tanks were empty.

“The vehicle is absolutely alive — it’s hissing, it’s groaning, there’s expansion and contraction going on,” he remembered. “It’s a lot more scary.”

He sees Thursday’s accident as a setback that SpaceX will recover from as it continues an unsteady to march toward human spaceflight.

“I have a lot of faith in the people that are doing these things,” he said. “But it’s a reminder that this is a pretty tricky business.”

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 orjdean@floridatoday.com.And follow on Twitter at@flatoday_jdeanand on Facebook atfacebook.com/jamesdeanspace.