SpaceX worker injury rates at Starbase Outpace Industry Rivals

SpaceX employees are more likely to be injured when working at Starbase than in each of his other manufacturing facilities, according to the security documents for corporate workers checked by Techcrunch.

Starbase, a spacious start and manufacturing location, which was recently recorded as a separate Texas city in Texas, recorded injury rates that were almost 6x higher than the average for comparable outfits for the production of space vehicles and almost 3x higher than in 2024 as an aerospace production as a whole in 2024. the exchange of Starbase injury data to the Federal Regulatory Authority began.

Starbase houses the most ambitious program of SpaceX: a fully reusable, ultra-lank rocket called Starship. The company has moved at an exciting pace to start Starlink internet and other payload online.

Since the first orbital test of the Starship in April 2023, SpaceX has tried eight additional integrated flights. During three of these tests, the company made history by gaining the massive super heavy booster with “chopsticks” arms to the starting tower.

The data indicate that SpaceX's quick progress is going on. And while the injury rates alone do not offer a complete picture of the security culture in Starbase, they offer a rare insight into the working conditions of the world's leading space company.

Starbase figures open

The OSHA uses a standardized security metric, which is referred to as totally recordable Incident Rate (Trir) to measure a company's security record and compare with colleagues in the industry such as Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance. The publicly available data have restrictions. It does not differentiate between minor injuries such as stings and serious incidents such as amputations.

TechCrunch calculated the trir based on this data, including the total number of incidents and the total number of hours, which were edited by SpaceX employees at every location.

Starbase, which plays a central role in Elon Musk's mission of SpaceX to make life into several planning multi-planetaries, is a outlier in the company and throughout the industry. His trir was 4.27 injuries per 100 employees in 2024 when she started an average of 2,690 employees, as can be seen from the data submitted to the OSHA. Injured Starbase employees were able to fulfill their normal tasks for a total of 3,558 days with limited service and 656 days of lost time, on which injuries did not work at all.

Starbase is classified by the US government as a Space Vehicle manufacturing company. The injury rate in this sector has dropped dramatically since 1994, which, according to historical data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, dropped from 4.2 injuries per 100 employees per 100 employees per 100 in 2023. (BLS calculates these tariffs through its annual corporate surveys, which are requested according to the same information in Osha worker injury forms.) Despite major changes to the security processes in the industry, Starbase is closer to the installments of 30 years ago.

The injury rate in all production facilities of SpaceX – including an engine development and test site in McGregor, Texas; A Starlink satellite manufacturing complex in Bastrop, Texas; The Falcon rocket complex in Hawthorne, California; And another satellite manufacturer in Redmond, Washington, is 2.28.

These other facilities report lower trir rates, although most exceed the industries. For example, 2024 data from 2.48 at McGregor, 3.49 at BASTROP, 1.43 in Hawthorne, 2.89 in Redmond. The 2024 trir for the production of aerospace as a whole is 1.6.

SpaceX also operates several locations that have not been produced, including barge operations off both coasts. Offices in Sunnyvale, California; And start sites in Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Space Force Base.

Former chief of staff Debbie Berkowitz to Osha said Techcrunch via e -Mail that Starbase's Trir is “a red flag that there are serious security problems that need to be addressed.”

However, there is a debate between security specialists as to whether Trir is the most reliable metric for the assessment and prediction of injury rates, in particular serious incidents such as deaths and especially for small companies. In a recently carried out work on Trir, the statistical validity was questioned and advocates that companies use alternative measures for security instead.

Of the 14 Osha inspections in SpaceX facilities in the past four years, six accidents and injuries have been involved in Starbase. This includes a partial finger amputation in 2021 and a crane stoll price in June 2025. The latter inspection has not yet been completed. Studies of other news agencies, including Reuters, have uncovered hundreds of workers' injuries that have not previously been reported, including shredded limbs and a death.

The 2024 injury rate at Starbase marks an improvement in the previous year, which was exceeded in 2023 at 5.9 injuries per 100 employees in 2022. However, it still leads to the land-based facilities of SpaceX and is only for the recreation processes of the West Coast Booster, which corresponds to a trir of 7.6.

Osha confirmed Techcrunch by calculating Starbase's Trir via e -Mail, but did not answer questions about the injury rate of this place. SpaceX did not respond to the request for comments.

The proportion of NASA

NASA has a significant share in the development of Starship. The agency counts to return the rocket to the moon before the end of this decade, and pays SpaceX more than 4 billion US dollars for two crew starship flights to the lunar surface.

Both the contract for the Treaty of Starship Lander and SpaceX for its commercial crew services for the international space station contain certain clauses that enable the agency to take measures in the event of a large security violation such as a death or a “intentional” or “repeated” OSHA injury.

A persistently high Trir rate can be proof of a security problem, is not an automatic trigger for measures and does not fall into the definition of a “serious security breach” in your contracts.

“NASA often interacts with its partners, including SpaceX, to ensure security from the perspective of mission security, and remains in contact with the company regularly during normal contract administration,” said a NASA spokesman for Techcrunch, in response to questions about the company's trir. “Safety is of the utmost importance for NASA's success. The agency continues to work with all of our commercial partners to build and maintain a healthy security culture.”

Starbase still leads the pack of rocket manufacturers with company vehicles: in the Ula production facility in Decatur, Alabama, the Trir is 1.12 injuries per 100 workers. In the Blue Origin rocket park on the Florida coast, the rate is 1.09.