Elon Musk's SpaceX is being sued by the wife of a company technician who suffered a fractured skull in a rocket engine accident in 2022. More than two years after the incident, Francisco Cabada remains in a coma.
On January 18, 2022, while Kabada was performing a pressure test inspection on the Raptor V2 engine at the Space Exploration Technology Company (SpaceX) base in Hawthorne, California, a cover of the fuel controller assembly came off. The part struck Kabada in the head, causing a skull fracture.
An accident investigation summary from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) confirmed that in this accident, the final step of the pressure check operation - venting - was completed for the first time using an automated procedure, rather than the common manual method used in previous operations.
The report also states that the controller cover cracked at the vertical to horizontal bevel seam, allowing the cover face to separate from the assembly. Reuters writes that Kabada's wife, Edie, filed a negligence lawsuit in a state court in Los Angeles, California, on her husband's behalf last week. Kabada is still in a coma.
Like Musk's other big company, Tesla, SpaceX has faced accusations of unsafe working conditions in its race to colonize Mars.
A Reuters investigation published last year found that SpaceX had suffered at least 600 previously unreported injuries since 2014. Many of these injuries were serious or disabling. These included shattered limbs, amputations, electrocutions, head and eye injuries, and even one death.
Many current and former employees say the injuries are often the result of undertrained and overtired workers skipping basic training in a rush to meet Musk's time demands, part of the "hardcore" work culture Musk has promoted at his companies, including his former Twitter site X. SpaceX employees also claimed that Musk discouraged them from wearing safety yellow clothing because he didn't like bright colors.
SpaceX's average injury rate in California is 1.8 per 100 workers, with three facilities having rates above the space industry standard of 0.8.
Last week, Musk told Tesla workers they would sleep on the factory floor when production of the new $25,000 electric vehicle begins next year. There have been numerous reports of incidents at the Gigafactory in Texas, including one where an engineer was seriously injured when the plant's automated machines drove metal claws into his back and arm.