SpaceX employees claim that founder Elon Musk has taken a lax approach to safety and has even discouraged the use of yellow safety clothing because he dislikes bright colors.
Three former SpaceX bosses explained how Musk even had machines painted in worker safety yellow repainted black or blue because of his aesthetic preferences.
Some workers were also reportedly told not to wear yellow safety vests in Musk’s presence.
At times, supervisors also asked workers to replace the yellow safety tape with red, supervisors said.
A Portal investigation found that there have been at least 600 unreported injuries to workers at SpaceX since 2014, including eight incidents that resulted in amputations.
Elon Musk stopped his employees from wearing yellow safety gear, SpaceX employees said
Musk doesn’t like bright colors and has even had yellow machines painted black or blue, while the yellow safety tape was replaced with red. Pictured inside the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California
Musk himself appeared at times unconcerned about safety during visits to SpaceX sites: four employees said he sometimes played with a new type of flamethrower.
For years, Musk and his deputies found it “weird” to wave the flamethrower around, fire it near other people and giggle “like they were in middle school,” one engineer said.
Musk tweeted in 2018 that the flamethrower is “guaranteed to liven up any party!” At SpaceX, Musk played with the device in cramped office environments, said the engineer, who once feared Musk would set someone’s hair on fire.
Last year, some SpaceX employees criticized Musk’s behavior as a “source of distraction and embarrassment” in an open letter.
Musk is known for running his companies at high intensity, occasionally doing work sprints and reportedly sleeping on the Tesla factory floor.
During an incident at Musk’s SpaceX facility in McGregor, Texas, Lonnie LeBlanc and his employees realized they had a problem.
They had to transport foam insulation to the rocket company’s main hangar, but had no straps to secure the load.
Musk himself appeared at times unconcerned about safety during visits to SpaceX sites: four employees said he sometimes played with a new type of flamethrower
Videos posted online show it can produce a thick flame more than 5 feet long. Musk played with the device in cramped office spaces, said the engineer, who once feared Musk would set someone’s hair on fire
LeBlanc, a relatively new employee, offered a solution to keep the load down: He sat on it.
After the truck drove away, a gust of wind blew LeBlanc and the insulation off the trailer, slamming him upside down onto the pavement.
LeBlanc, 38, who had retired from the U.S. Marine Corps nine months earlier. He was pronounced dead at the scene due to a head injury.
Federal inspectors from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) later found that SpaceX failed to protect LeBlanc from a clear hazard, citing the seriousness and seriousness of the violation.
LeBlanc’s employees told OSHA that SpaceX did not have convenient access to tie-downs and no process or oversight for handling such cargo. SpaceX acknowledged the problems and the agency directed the company to make seven specific safety improvements, including more training and equipment, according to the inspection report.
Many of the 600 documented injuries over the past nine years were serious or disabling.
All machines painted safety yellow, like in this GE energy plant, were painted blue or black at SpaceX
SpaceX technicians work on the Crew Dragon Demo-2 spacecraft at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California. There is practically nothing yellow to be seen
The records included reports of more than 100 workers with cuts or lacerations, 29 with broken bones or dislocations, 17 with “bruised hands or fingers” and nine with head injuries, including a skull fracture, four concussions and a traumatic brain injury.
The cases also included five burns, five electrocutions, eight accidents resulting in amputations, 12 injuries involving multiple unspecified body parts and seven workers with eye injuries.
Others were relatively minor, including more than 170 reports of strains or sprains.
The more than 600 SpaceX injuries represent only a portion of the total number of cases.
OSHA has required companies to report their total number of injuries annually since 2016, but SpaceX facilities have not submitted reports in most of those years.
The more than 600 injuries were calculated by reviewing court documents in employee lawsuits, employee medical records, state workers’ compensation claims and emergency call records.
Last year, some SpaceX employees criticized Musk’s behavior as a “source of distraction and embarrassment” in an open letter.
SpaceX, founded by Musk more than two decades ago, takes the position that workers are responsible for their self-protection, according to more than a dozen current and former employees, including a former executive
According to eight former SpaceX employees familiar with the accident, another serious injury occurred in January 2022 following a series of safety lapses at SpaceX.
In this case, a part flew off during pressure testing of a Raptor V2 rocket engine, fracturing employee Francisco Cabada’s skull and putting him in a coma.
Senior managers at the Hawthorne, California, site had been repeatedly warned about the dangers of rushing engine development, inadequate training of personnel and inadequate testing of components.
The part that failed and hit the worker had a flaw that was discovered before testing but not fixed, two of the employees said.
Cabada’s wife said the company ignored the family’s attempts to find out why he wasn’t protected.
“It would have been nice to get a call from Elon Musk,” said Ydy Cabada. “But I suspect the workers are simply available to them.”
Current and former employees said such injuries reflected a chaotic workplace where often undertrained and overtired employees routinely skipped basic safety measures as they struggled to meet Musk’s aggressive space mission deadlines.
SpaceX, founded by Musk more than two decades ago, takes the position that workers are responsible for their self-protection, according to more than a dozen current and former employees, including a former executive.
The lax safety culture, more than a dozen current and former employees said, stems in part from Musk’s disdain for perceived bureaucracy and a belief within SpaceX that the company is leading an urgent search for a space refuge from the dying Earth.
“Elon’s concept that SpaceX is on a mission to go to Mars as quickly as possible and save humanity permeates every part of the company,” said Tom Moline, a former SpaceX senior avionics engineer who was fired after making complaints submitted at work.
“The company justifies ignoring anything that could stand in the way of achieving this goal, including worker safety.”
SpaceX’s poor safety record underscores the dangers of working in the poorly regulated and fast-growing U.S. space industry.
SpaceX has made major breakthroughs. It was the first private company to send humans into orbit.
Its Starlink unit is now the world’s largest satellite operator. Competitors like Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have struggled to keep up with SpaceX’s reusable rockets, which have dramatically reduced launch costs.
Some SpaceX engineers say they enjoy collaborating with creative colleagues in an environment with little bureaucracy.
The injury rate at the company’s production and launch facility near Brownsville, Texas, was 4.8 injuries or illnesses per 100 workers in 2022 – six times higher than the space industry average of 0.8.
Its missile testing facility in McGregor, Texas, where LeBlanc died, had a rate of 2.7, more than three times the average.
The rate at the Hawthorne, California, manufacturing facility was more than double the average, with 1.8 injuries per 100 workers.
The company’s Redmond, Washington, plant had a rate of 0.8, which is in line with the industry average.