SpaceX punts Starship launch as investigation opens into Starbase worker's death

mmywacaday about 16 hours ago 25 commentsRead Article on scientificamerican.com

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Ajedi32•about 16 hours ago

Headline is misleading. The launch is happening tomorrow weather permitting, and the delays that already happened are most likely unrelated to the accident that killed the worker. There's also no evidence that accident rates at Starbase are higher than at any other US construction site.

codingdave•about 16 hours ago

You're joking, right?

Starbase is notorious for high accident rates.

Ajedi32•about 16 hours ago

Compared to what? US average fatal accident rate for construction is 9.2 deaths per 100,000 full-time workers per year. In oil and gas extraction it's 13.8. In agriculture it's 20.9. In manufacturing it's 2.4. What's Starbase's rate?

(Source: https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-inju...)

bryanlarsen•about 16 hours ago

Fatality rate is hard to compare because of the low divisor problem.

Injury rate is 4.27 per 100. Which is under half the average value for active construction sites and 3x the average value for aerospace manufacturing facilities. Choose your comparator based on whether you want to praise or bash SpaceX.

orwin•about 15 hours ago

Those are very, very high numbers, no? I think France is one of the worst offender in the western world (or at least worst in Europe by far) and we have slightly inferior rates (3 times the eurozone average), and it's a big issue. Not politically, almost no one cares about blue collar workers, especially not the current government, but in companies (at least in mine), reducing death became a focus point for three years.

jjk166•about 14 hours ago

I'm surprised mining is so low. As an outsider, it seems like similar work to construction but with the danger turned up to 11. I can think of multiple potential explanations, but I have no intuitive sense of which, if any, is likely right.

drob518•about 16 hours ago

Data?

codingdave•about 16 hours ago

Start here: https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/18/spacex-worker-injury-rates...

Drill down into the links from there. Or do a search. Or ask an LLM. I have a hard time finding any data that doesn't think they have high rates.

Veserv•about 16 hours ago

What are you talking about? Injury rate at Starbase (Brownsville) was 6x higher than industry average in 2022 [1].

Furthermore, you have gotten the burden of proof backwards. The default presumption is non-safety. The burden of proof is on insiders (who have all the access) to robustly demonstrate in a clear and convincing manner that things are safe, not on outsiders (who only have limited access) to demonstrate in a clear and convincing manner that things are dangerous.

So, please present your evidence that their injury or fatality rate is normal. Absence of evidence defaults to your claim it is safe being unsupported.

edit: codingdave comment has a more recent link that also determines 2023 and 2024 also had injury rates multiple times higher than industry average.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48214074

[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/spacex-m...

NetMageSCW•about 15 hours ago

What industry is being compared, and how does that compare to what SpaceX is actually doing?

NamTaf•about 13 hours ago

Here you go: https://www.bls.gov/web/osh/table-1-industry-rates-national....

Mining, quarrying, and oil and gas extraction: 1.2

Coal mining: 3.1

Heavy and civil engineering construction: 1.8

Animal slaughtering and processing: 3.2

Wood product manufacturing (inc. sawmills): 4.2

Foundries: 5.1

Aerospace product and parts manufacturing: 1.6

Rail transportation: 3.4

Judging solely by the aforementioned linked data, at 4.8, Brownsville should be shut down by management to do a safety intervention. McGregor and Hawthorne should be under the limelight, too. Redmond and CC seem good.

dolphinscorpion•about 15 hours ago

>> What are you talking about? Injury rate at Starbase (Brownsville) was 6x higher than industry average in 2022

That's a sacrifice Elon is willing to make

plugger•about 8 hours ago

3x higher than other rocket builders. Comparing a rocket factory to a construction site it borderline laughable.

sublinear•about 16 hours ago

> no evidence that accident rates at Starbase are higher than at any other US construction site

I was actually just about to comment that it's surprising how few accidents we've heard about from a facility like that.

Either they're doing an amazing job, or they have a great lid on it despite all that want to see them fail.

tekla•about 16 hours ago

Are you accusing the media of misleading news about SpaceX, amazing bait for HN????

Yes, they are.

blendergeek•about 16 hours ago

https://archive.ph/z7xCk

NetMageSCW•about 15 hours ago

Sad to see what Scientific American has become.

ChrisArchitect•about 10 hours ago

Starship's Twelfth Flight Test

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48214558