Worker Safety in the Private Space Race

Who takes the risk and who gets the reward?

Photo by Ümit Yıldırım via Unsplash

Last month, Reuters published the results of an investigation into workplace injuries at various SpaceX facilities. In particular, they found that in 2022, SpaceX’s Brownsville, TX manufacturing and launch facility reported a workplace injury rate six times higher than the space industry average, and the SpaceX rocket testing facility in McGregor, TX had an injury rate three times the industry average. Workplace safety incidents at SpaceX facilities have resulted in serious and disabling injuries, including amputations, skull fractures, traumatic brain injuries, and one death so far (in 2014). And this is just the data that Reuters was able to obtain from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA): SpaceX has failed to report its annual injury data to OSHA for most of the past several years, even though OSHA has required these reports since 2016. Some SpaceX workers may also be accumulating long-term damage to their health: for example, the article describes SpaceX welders working in closed, unventilated tents without respirators at the Brownsville facility, exposing them to the toxic, carcinogenic dust produced by welding stainless steel.

I’ve written in my book and elsewhere about my concerns that the physical hazards of the space environment will increase workers’ vulnerability to labor exploitation when we begin to move more of our workforce off-Earth. But it’s also important to keep an eye on labor practices in the current space industry here on Earth, even though today’s space workers are not yet in that extreme environment. The workplace norms and cultures that we establish in these early days of the space industry will set a precedent, and may well be passed down to future generations of workers in space.

While the Reuters article is focused on SpaceX, worker injuries in the space industry are not limited to one single company. At least 24 space industry workers have been killed on the job since 1980, including three Virgin Galactic technicians killed in 2007 by an explosion during a rocket engine test while developing SpaceShipTwo (the spacecraft later involved in a test flight that killed a Virgin Galactic pilot in 2014). An essay published by 21 Blue Origin employees in 2021 noted safety issues within the company and expressed concerns that the workplace culture within Blue Origin mirrors organizational issues within NASA that were cited as a contributor to the Challenger disaster. As the Reuters article notes:

A dozen worker-safety experts said SpaceX’s poor safety record underscores the perils of working in the lightly regulated and fast-expanding U.S. space industry. Other major space companies have also failed to report annual injury data to OSHA in some recent years.

This quote points to a major contributing factor to the safety issues at SpaceX and other private space companies: speed. Time is money, and the competitive and speculative nature of today’s space industry is creating a gold-rush mentality that has investors and entrepreneurs racing to be the first to establish a foothold in this potentially extremely profitable new industry, which can pressure managers to work faster than their safety guidelines allow, for fear of another company reaching their milestones first. The Reuters article quotes over a dozen SpaceX workers observing that the company’s “willingness to cut corners and skip some worker safeguards has helped keep it well ahead of competitors and score lucrative governmental contracts.” The classic “move fast and break things” attitude, inherited from the tech industry of Silicon Valley, likely plays a role as well, but tech entrepreneurs who have expanded into the physical (and explosive) world of rocket engineering need to recognize that they’re not supposed to break people in their rush to innovation.

The Reuters article also notes another motivation for cutting corners on safety that is unique to the space industry and is very popular at SpaceX in particular: the idea that the company is working to save humanity by enabling the colonization of Mars:

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 inside SpaceX that it’s leading an urgent quest to create a refuge in space from a dying Earth.

“Elon’s concept that SpaceX is on this mission to go to Mars as fast as possible and save humanity permeates every part of the company,” said Tom Moline, a former SpaceX senior avionics engineer who was among a group of employees fired after raising workplace complaints. “The company justifies casting aside anything that could stand in the way of accomplishing that goal, including worker safety.”

I’ve spoken before about the effects that this particular motivation for space settlement can have on the public discourse about humanity’s future in space: If the stakes are this high— after all, we’re trying to prevent the extinction of the human race— then it’s tempting to argue that any cost is justified. Yet it’s the people with less power and privilege that tend to bear the brunt of that cost: writers from marginalized groups experience harassment for expressing criticism of certain plans for space colonization; poor and Indigenous communities are displaced or experience environmental damage on their land due to the construction of testing, manufacturing, and launch sites; and workers at these sites risk their lives to perform the physical labor needed to push the space industry forward.

Even space industry managers who believe that a few worker deaths are an acceptable loss on their way to achieving their companies’ goals should recognize that their customers, including governmental space agencies and the general public, do place a high priority on safety and reliability in space travel. After the loss of Challenger, Space Shuttle flights did not resume for over two and a half years, while NASA conducted investigations and redesigns of the program. A similar two-year pause occurred after the Columbia disaster in 2003, delaying construction of the ISS. Investigations into both incidents noted the pressure to meet a high-cadence launch schedule as a contributing factor. Future disasters and loss of life aboard private spacecraft will likely also lead to pauses, investigations, and redesigns: moderating the pace of development in order to adhere to safety procedures may actually increase the speed at which space companies (and space settlement advocates) reach their goals.

Human spaceflight is dangerous and difficult, and at some point in the process, it requires test pilots and astronauts to risk death in the pursuit of technological advancement. But a future for humanity in space can (and should) be accomplished in conjunction with a respect for workplace safety and a willingness to spend the time and money to avoid unnecessary death and injury.

Other News

Off-Earth

I am delighted to announce that Off-Earth: Ethical Questions and Quandaries for Living in Outer Space is now available as an audiobook, narrated by April Doty! You can find the audiobook version in all of the usual locations, including Audible, Google Play, and Audiobooks.com.

I’ve also been told that a Chinese (simplified) translation of the book would be published some time last month, but I haven’t been able to confirm that it’s out yet.

Off-Earth has also been selected as one of Science News’ favorite science books of the year!

Interviews and Panels

Back in August, I participated in a virtual panel for the Museum of Science in Boston called “Space is for Everyone | Journey to Mars”. The recording for that event is now available at the Museum of Science’s website.

In October, I had a great conversation with Kirthi Jayakumar of the Gender Security Project, and you can read that interview here.

Upcoming Events

I’m organizing a virtual conference through my nonprofit, the JustSpace Alliance, called the Environmental Justice in Space (EJiS) Workshop. It’ll be held on June 20-21, 2024, and our goal is to bring space experts together with environmental justice activists and researchers to discuss areas of concern in the space environment, lessons learned from the history of environmental justice movements on Earth, and ideas for ensuring an equitable and sustainable future for humanity in space. Registration is free(!) and open now at this link; you can also submit an abstract on this form to give a pre-recorded talk.