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At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk's rush to Mars

reuters.com

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Re: At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk's rush to Mars

#41

Post by infecto »

hef19898 wrote: post #32
infecto wrote: post #26

Not here defending SpaceX, cannot speak for some of the specific cases like the individual who was sitting on top of a truck to hold a load down. What I don't like though is the lack of real comparison. It reads more like a hit piece against spacex with all the specific examples of cases that tug at the heart. Would like to see some better comparison, I don't know how realistic the space industry average is. How many…

Ultimately, a worker sitting on top of a truck to hold down a load, is a failure of the company: rules and trainings have to be implace to avoid this unsafe behavior, managers, and ultimately the CEO, has to enforce those rules. If that doesn't happen an unsafe culture is promoted, one that leads to accidents.

Right, but this piece did not focus on the data and instead of pulled specific examples out. I think it would have been more convincing to at least speak more on the numbers, compare it to the US averages and look at different industries within the US. If I take the BLS average of missed days and other, 2.7 is higher then what I think is the 2.2 average that spacex has across different sites. I am not saying that means SpaceX is a safe place to work but we should dive into those details more to get a better picture.

Worker deaths will always exist, sometimes due to unsafe practices and sometimes the fault of the worker. Every 101minutes a worker dies in the US. This is why OSHA exists.

Re: At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk's rush to Mars

#42

Post by mschuster91 »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #24
yetihehe wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For US readers - replace comma with dot, Germans (and most other europeans) use floats with comma.

We also call a BigMac a Royale with Cheese.

McDonalds offers the BigMac just the same as in the US, the Royale is a different burger

Re: At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk's rush to Mars

#43

Post by hef19898 »

mirekrusin wrote: post #40
infecto wrote: post #26

Not here defending SpaceX, cannot speak for some of the specific cases like the individual who was sitting on top of a truck to hold a load down. What I don't like though is the lack of real comparison. It reads more like a hit piece against spacex with all the specific examples of cases that tug at the heart. Would like to see some better comparison, I don't know how realistic the space industry average is. How many…

Exactly, ie. Qatar had something like 40 deaths during World Cup construction.

Some forced labour camps are even worse than that! Nothing to see here, just move on!

Re: At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk's rush to Mars

#44

Post by butler14 »

hef19898 wrote: post #32
infecto wrote: post #26

Not here defending SpaceX, cannot speak for some of the specific cases like the individual who was sitting on top of a truck to hold a load down. What I don't like though is the lack of real comparison. It reads more like a hit piece against spacex with all the specific examples of cases that tug at the heart. Would like to see some better comparison, I don't know how realistic the space industry average is. How many…

Ultimately, a worker sitting on top of a truck to hold down a load, is a failure of the company: rules and trainings have to be implace to avoid this unsafe behavior, managers, and ultimately the CEO, has to enforce those rules. If that doesn't happen an unsafe culture is promoted, one that leads to accidents.

How do you train someone not to do stupid sh*t like that?

What’s saying that employee didn’t go through H&S training?

I get the legalities, it’s just a fringe case to the extreme, and conflation of that case to imply some wider problem.

Reads like a hit piece.

Re: At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk's rush to Mars

#45

Post by easyThrowaway »

gooseus wrote: post #18
Eumenes wrote: post #8

A worthy sacrifice for the advancement of humankind

If only Elon was actually advancing actual humanity, and not just his own narrow idea of what humanity should be. Also, trying to establish a self-sustaining base on Mars right now is short-sighted and a tremendous waste of energy and material. Also also, how you do a thing is (often) as important as doing the thing itself, we're still suffering the consequences of last centuries megalomaniacal claims to be advancing…

Also, if a manned mission to mars goes awry with a catastrophic failure due to cutting corners and carelessness Oceangate-style, we will probably see a massive slowdown and cut funding in space exploration in the future due to the bad publicity.

Re: At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk's rush to Mars

#46

Post by jaimex2 »

hnbad wrote: post #29
fernandotakai wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when bad things happen, elon is responsible. when good things happen, elon had nothing to do with it, he's useless and only do harm.

The thing is that the bad things are usually failures of management, the good things are feats of engineering. Elon Musk is despite the title he bestowed upon himself, not a rocket scientist. He's an ideas guy at worst and an activist executive at best. That the first three Tesla models spell out "S3X" is entirely on him. That they're fairly decent electrical cars is not. That there are superchargers everywhere is on…

Gotta cut down them tall poppies

Re: At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk's rush to Mars

#47

Post by proteal »

infecto wrote: post #26

Not here defending SpaceX, cannot speak for some of the specific cases like the individual who was sitting on top of a truck to hold a load down. What I don't like though is the lack of real comparison. It reads more like a hit piece against spacex with all the specific examples of cases that tug at the heart. Would like to see some better comparison, I don't know how realistic the space industry average is. How many…

I used to do workers comp insurance (which covers against the injuries in the article) and 600 injuries over almost 10 years sounds relatively in line with my expectations of a construction/prototyping firm. It sounds like the journalist got a leaked copy of the SpaceX loss runs. They tend to make the accidents sound more gruesome than they really are. If you get a papercut and report it, that shows up as a laceration on the sheet. Not saying there aren’t bad claims (amputation and death are never good!), but it’s very easy to make a company look bad even if they have good risk control.

I’m not denying that there probably were gaps in personal safety, but my guess is the risk manager has improved process. If this weren’t the case, no one would sell them workers comp insurance. I agree this looks like a hit piece.

Re: At SpaceX, worker injuries soar in Elon Musk's rush to Mars

#50

Post by davemp »

butler14 wrote: post #44
hef19898 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultimately, a worker sitting on top of a truck to hold down a load, is a failure of the company: rules and trainings have to be implace to avoid this unsafe behavior, managers, and ultimately the CEO, has to enforce those rules. If that doesn't happen an unsafe culture is promoted, one that leads to accidents.

How do you train someone not to do stupid sh*t like that? What’s saying that employee didn’t go through H&S training? I get the legalities, it’s just a fringe case to the extreme, and conflation of that case to imply some wider problem. Reads like a hit piece.

> How do you train someone not to do stupid sh*t like that?

There needs good safety culture. If all your peers will give you an earful if they catch you doing something so visibly dangerous, you'll be less inclined to be a cowboy. Culture usually comes from the top down.

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