SpaceX Employees Getting Wounded at Incredible Rates
Working in manufacturing always comes with occupational hazards, but according to a new review, those who work at SpaceX's facilities experience injuries at rates far higher than industry averages.
Per a Reuters analysis, SpaceX's launch-and-manufacturing facilities had between five and nine times as many injuries as would be typical last year.
The news wire's analysis came from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's 2023 newly released records from SpaceX, the most comprehensive yet from the Elon Musk-owned company that builds rockets for NASA. In 2022, Reuters notes, the company only gave injury reports from five facilities, and before that, it didn't provide any records of the kind at all, which makes it hard to parse just how longstanding the issue is.
At SpaceX's facility in Brownsville, Texas, for instance, the company reported 5.9 injuries per 100 workers in 2023, up from 4.8 in 2022. A unit that retrieves its spent rocket boosters from the Pacific Ocean, meanwhile, had 7.6 injuries per 100 employees, which is more than nine times the industry average of 0.8.
