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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

#71

Post by mschuster91 »

yreg wrote: post #60
mschuster91 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Germany, workplace injuries have gone continuously down over the decades [1], and at 1,827 per 1000 workers it's significantly less than the US with 2,7 [2]. The difference is pretty certainly due to way less regulations and enforcement in the US combined with way greedier employers. [1] https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/6051/umfrage/... [2] https://www.bls.gov/charts/injuries-and-illnesses/total-nonf…

So in Germany, 1.827 per 1000 die, but it is a sacrifice we are willing to make.

That's the total injury rate, and both the national and European governments as well as unions are doing their best to get that number to close to 0 as possible.

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

#73

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

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.

Uhm, yes, not a comparandum that I'd love if I were a major business.

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

#74

Post by justapassenger »

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…

> What I don't like though is the lack of real comparison

Did you read the article?

> The 2022 injury rate at the company’s manufacturing-and-launch facility near Brownsville, Texas, was 4.8 injuries or illnesses per 100 workers – six times higher than the space-industry average of 0.8. Its rocket-testing facility in McGregor, Texas, where LeBlanc died, had a rate of 2.7, more than three times the average. The rate at its Hawthorne, California, manufacturing facility was more than double the average at 1.8 injuries per 100 workers. The company’s facility in Redmond, Washington, had a rate of 0.8, the same as the industry average.

Also, what's missed in your logic - safety is a process. You can see lots of evidence in this article (which isn't surprising, as Musk talks about it openly) that they avoid process of safety, view it as one-off responsibilities and will cut it whenever they need to move fast on some artificial goals set by the wealthiest man on earth.

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

#75

Post by justapassenger »

For the keyboard warriors, defending it and telling people that it's individuals fault.

Lots of you work in tech, behind the desk. If the system you're working on keeps on breaking when others interact with it - is their fault or is the system not advanced enough? If you give all your employees root access to the production, and expect them to use it wisely and care about safety - when it something breaks - is it the fault of the employee or fault of the company for allowing such a reckless actions?

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

#76

Post by izacus »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #63
izacus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's an article showing how Musks other company, Tesla, has a 3x larger injury occurence in Berlin as e.g. Audi: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37689959 You all really need to stop shilling for that dude.

Critical reading of potentially bad journalism isn't shilling.

Defending a known bad actor which has shown a pattern of same behaviour is.

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

#77

Post by yreg »

mschuster91 wrote: post #71
yreg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in Germany, 1.827 per 1000 die, but it is a sacrifice we are willing to make.

That's the total injury rate, and both the national and European governments as well as unions are doing their best to get that number to close to 0 as possible.

Ok, my point is the amount of deaths is nonzero and it is a sacrifice even European governments and unions are willing to make.

We should do our best to reduce that number, but I consider the original quote nonsense.

We haven't closed down all factories even though people sometimes die in factories. It is a sacrifice we are willing to make, even though we try to mitigate it as much as possible.

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

#78

Post by FrustratedMonky »

robertlagrant wrote: post #7
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #5

In a lot of US manufacturing plants, this stuff would get you fired. How does SpaceX get to skirt regulations?

Happy to be corrected here with citations, but I'm not sure that regulations are actually what get people fired. It's company policy.

Correct.

More like: 'we have a policy to follow regulations, you have blatantly broken regulations that has now put us at risk, thus you are non-compliant with our policy to follow regulations, so good-bye'.

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

#79

Post by hnbad »

fernandotakai wrote: post #53
hnbad wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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. while i agree, we also have jim cantrell (an actual rocket scientist) comments on musk[0]: >"He is the smartest guy I've ever met, period," Cantrell tells us. "I know that sounds overblown. But I've met plenty of smart people, and I don't say that lightly. He's absolutely, fr…

Your quote suggests Cantrell thinks he's smart, not that he's technically competent, let alone competent enough to actually understand the nuances of the technology.

Getting the powers-that-be to understand technical intricacies is as much about having someone able to explain concepts well to someone who is not a domain expert as it is about having someone who is not a domain expert able to reason about problems with an incomplete understanding. That you can explain technology to Musk and get him to ask relevant questions or that he can pick up enough jargon and specific concepts to hold his own in a casual technical conversation doesn't mean he's an omni-genius let alone that he understands the technology.

Yes, "ideas guy" is an extremely uncharitable way to put it, but that's why I said "at worst" that's what he is. The Tesla cybertruck and the Hyperloop are certainly ideas guy products (the latter literally because what he envisioned is so nonsensical none of the so-called implementations actually have anything to do with it and those that try obviously underperform even moderate expectations). Clearly many things he's heading have worked out better than that. But if you look at the actual things he's done himself and his actual biography (rather than the hagiography he has created for himself) he is a lot more underwhelming and his success much more a product of being in the right place at the right time and hanging onto the right coat tails (e.g. Peter Thiel, who is equally despicable as a human being but clearly more technologically competent).

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

#80

Post by marcusverus »

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…

From the subreddit:

The 0.8 injuries per 100 workers for "Guided missile and space vehicle manufacturing" category is very low when comparing to other manufacturing industries that is comparable to what SpaceX is doing:

Average of all private industries: 2.7

Fabricated metal product manufacturing: 3.7

Machinery manufacturing: 2.8

Motor vehicle manufacturing: 5.9

Motor vehicle body and trailer manufacturing: 5.8

Motor vehicle parts manufacturing: 3.1

Aircraft manufacturing: 2.5

Ship and boat building: 5.6

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