Reuters documented at least 600 previously unreported workplace injuries at Musk’s rocket company: crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions, head and eye wounds and one death. SpaceX employees say they’re paying the price for the billionaire’s push to colonize space at breakneck speed.
Florentino Rios suffered a severe eye injury at SpaceX’s Brownsville site one summer night in 2021, as he worked about 25 feet off the ground attaching two beams to a launch pad. A crane operator missed a hand signal from Rios and mistakenly tried to move the beams after they were fixed in place, Rios said in an interview. That error caused a chain connecting the crane to the beams to snap and strike Rios in the face. Another worker who was present confirmed Rios’ account.
The team should have had walkie-talkies, Rios said, and had previously asked management for better lighting.
Senior managers were repeatedly warned for at least a year before the accident that pressure-testing crews were not following standard worker-safety protocols, such as providing protective barriers or clearing personnel from the testing area, according to a former employee familiar with the matter. Such testing should be conducted with a “boom box” covering the whole engine to protect workers, the employee said. At one point, managers rejected a new training program, written and proposed by pressure-testing staff, on the grounds that it would cause delays, according to the source and a document reviewed by Reuters.
Another key contributing factor: SpaceX senior managers, in the months leading up to the accident, had instructed engineers to end or limit the testing of individual rocket parts before they are assembled into an engine, two staffers said. The managers were reacting to Musk’s demands for faster progress on the Raptor engine program, the workers said.
The team normally would have conducted more extensive testing on the cover that malfunctioned and struck Cabada, they said.
Francisco Cabada remains in a coma nearly two years after his skull was fractured as he worked at SpaceX. He’s pictured here, before the accident, with his wife, Ydy, and their three children. Handout via REUTERS
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