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Could, for example, OSHA regulations prevent SpaceX employees from traveling on a rocket with unsafe working conditions? Is there anything that would exempt wor
by hirundo 5y ago
Could, for example, OSHA regulations prevent SpaceX employees from traveling on a rocket with unsafe working conditions? Is there anything that would exempt workers on the way to Mars from the same safety requirements that apply to the people who build the rockets?
- eesmith 5y agoOnce you look at things that broadly then there are a lot of ways to prevent a launch. If SpaceX stole its rocket components from another company, then the local police could shut them down too. We know it's acceptable for NASA astronauts to be in a far more dangerous workplace environment than the workers who built their rockets, so I don't see why a SpaceX crew would have the same safety requirements as a builder of a SpaceX rocket. For example, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-rating_certification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-rating_certification I see NASA's requirement for human-rated space travel is a mission loss risk of "no more than 1 in 270" for "up to 210 days". Given that SpaceX has roughly 10,000 employees, that would be about 30 employee deaths per year - far higher than most workplaces. My ill-informed belief is that safety requirements for a private mission to Mars would fall under FAA jurisdiction, not OSHA. At the very least, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Administration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Administratio... says "The first FAA licensed orbital human space flight took place on November 15, 2020"