Starbase injury rates outpace rivals as SpaceX chases its Mars moonshot
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
That a massive construction site with hundreds of welders and framers and plumbers and concrete workers, and linemen and ditch diggers, and survey workers and architects, and smiths and truck drivers and landscapers, and janitors and carpet layers and warehouse workers, and sewer workers, masons, electricians, and heavy equipment operators (massive cranes, bulldozers, man lifts, graders, boring rigs, excavators, etc.) most of them working outdoors in the TX weather, building dozen of homes, a rec center, factories, launch facilities, office buildings, apartment complexes, not to mention the largest ever space vehicles in volume numbers, has a higher injury rate than some ULA office workers sitting behind desks or in clean rooms building and launching a couple of classic rockets a year?
Surprise, surprise.
I just skimmed the article, but it looks like the rate is based on headcount, not productivity:
> TRIR topped out at 4.27 injuries per 100 workers in 2024, when it employed an average of 2,690 workers, according to the data submitted to OSHA. Injured Starbase employees were unable to perform their normal job duties for a total of 3,558 restricted-duty days, plus 656 lost-time days where injuries made them unable to work at all.
> Starbase is classified by the U.S. government as a space vehicle manufacturing operation. The injury rate in this sector has fallen dramatically since 1994, dropping from 4.2 injuries per 100 workers to 0.7 injuries per 100 workers in 2023, according to historical data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (BLS calculates these rates through its annual company surveys, which asks for the same information found in OSHA’s worker injury forms.) But despite major changes in safety processes across the industry, Starbase is closer to the rates of 30 years ago.
Compare Starbase not to other rocket facilities but to large-scale construction projects. Then we'll have apples to apples injury rates.
If you want to compare rocket factories, then only count injuries in the Starfactory itself, or factory+launch staff, or whatever. But comparing a city under construction with a long-completed launch facility and the offices used by the launch staff is disingenuous at best.
You believe OSHA's categorization of aerospace "manufacturing" facilities is wrong? Why?
It voted itself a city for bureaucratic reasons, but a teeming metropolis it is not.
0 - https://www.bls.gov/web/osh/table-1-industry-rates-national....
> OSHA uses a standardized safety metric called Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) to measure a company’s safety record and compare it to industry peers, like Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance.
> Of the 14 OSHA inspections at SpaceX facilities over the past four years, six involved accidents and injuries at Starbase. That includes a partial finger amputation in 2021 and a crane collapse in June 2025. The latter inspection is still ongoing. Investigations by other news outlets including Reuters have uncovered hundreds of previously unreported worker injuries, including crushed limbs and one fatality.
Hard to get injured making a powerpoint presentation.
More rockets = more people working more hours.
i imagine elon is pushing them to build much faster than normal and they'll try.. but you also can't be on anything working a fast schedule. i think zyns would be the only thing safe, adderall would leave you too dehydrated, painkillers sure but you also get clumsier ime, even advil had me feeling off.
construction is hard! i have no idea how the Japanese have such efficiency. they work fast and make it look relaxed.
I have no special insight, but I would speculate that it’s a byproduct of their culture of keeping everybody on the same page and measuring twice (or thrice) before cutting. In the US, we tend to try to speed up by making speed the goal which counterintuitively slows things down due to corners cut, i’s and t’s not dotted and crossed, poor coordination, etc.
Why is it a city.
The settlement only has houses - it's a hamlet.
The settlement has a church - it's a village.
The settlement has a market - it's a town.
The settlement has a cathedral - it's a city.
Because it was voted into being. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/voters-in-texas-approv...
Its a way to manipulate the system to accelerator the plan. Smart thinking, but I suspect some aspect of this will be controversial.
https://www.southernliving.com/travel/disney-world-city-reed...
Compare with https://www.bls.gov/web/osh/table-1-industry-rates-national....
Looks to me like Starbase is far safer than automobile manufacturing. Let alone hospital nursing care.
So - other than "We <3 Elon Bashing", what's the point of the article? Nobody who's been inside a real factory would be surprised that busy Starbase has higher injuries rates than its "Slowly Going Nowhere, Ferociously" competition.
ULA employees spend a lot higher percentage of their time on paperwork than SpaceX employees do. The injury rate while doing paperwork should be essentially zero.
SpaceX does 5-10 times as many launches per employee, and has an injury rate 6 times as high per employee. So the injury rate per rocket launch is comparable.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/04/tesla-workers-gettin...
> Among the more baffling details in the report are several sections about how Elon Musk’s personal tastes appear to have affected the factory’s safety for the worse, “his preferences … were well known and led to cutting back on those standard safety signals.” Musk, apparently, really hates the color yellow. So instead of using the aforementioned hue, lane lines on the factory floor are painted in shades of gray. (Tesla denies this and sent Reveal photos of “rails and posts” painted yellow in the factory.) He also is not into having “too many signs” or the beeping sound forklifts make in reverse.
If you have 100 people standing around for a year, they probably have lower injuries than the same 100 people who are using heavy machinery over the course of a year. And it's not like most corporations are efficient.
SpaceX may have less redundancy in their workforce causing the injury rate to go up since more people are working more often.
Or SpaceX is overworking people in unsafe conditions and causing way more injuries.
Either way, rate per person does not negate people working vs. Not.
I know SpaceX is vertically integrated, but I wouldn't have thought that'd extend to stuff like building sheds and running toilet plumbing.