15 ms·

An Accident at SpaceX

300 points by alphabetting 4y ago

carabiner 4y ago
This is a glimpse of the aerospace industry behind the curtain. Much of it is backed by the filipino and hispanic working class in LA. These guys live in the roughest neighborhoods and are in charge of precision assembly of human transport. I don't know the exact ratio, but maybe 5 technicians like him per office engineer.
- xwdv 4y ago
  - imadethis 4y ago
    What makes these workers “compromised” in your view?
    - xwdv 4y ago
      Overworked, underpaid, stressful living situations. Sometimes even loosely trained.
  - thorncorona 4y ago
    I don’t feel like compromised is the right word here?
  - kbelder 4y ago
    More of a testament to the workers.
    - xwdv 4y ago
      I don’t see how. Without the engineers, the workers wouldn’t have the techniques, designs or procedures to build such precise and complex machines.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Much of it is backed by the filipino and hispanic working class in LA Most of the aerospace industry isn't in Los Angeles [1]. [1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172011.htm#st https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172011.htm#st
- adolph 4y ago
  What's wrong with folks who live in "the roughest neighborhoods" being "in charge of precision assembly of human transport?"
  - bell-cot 4y ago
- twawaaay 4y ago
  SpaceX is a for profit organisation. You might find it hard to believe, but having select few design equipment and processes that will then be used by much less skilled and paid workers is how most production companies work. Now, I don't have any numbers. But if SpaceX is able to hire and maintain predominantly minority staff (assuming they are paid a reasonable wage) isn't it a win for those communities?
  - fwip 4y ago
    I feel like Francisco Cabada probably doesn't count it as a win.
    - mensetmanusman 4y ago
      Not sure. Many people are happy to take risks to improve the lives of the next generation. I work in R&D and when my kids have asked if I could die at work, I say “yes” with a smile :)
    - twawaaay 4y ago
      Hire enough people to work around dangerous things and you will get accidents. The question really is whether the company is reasonably trying to prevent unnecessary risks and react with changes when accidents happen.
fayalargeau 4y ago
> The company’s silence on the incident is a particularly dramatic reflection of a core dynamic in America’s new space race: The unspoken truth that human lives are at play at every level. ???? Does a company need to make an announcement or public statement for every incident that occurs at work? There are risks at every job. How is this even an article-worthy?
- TylerE 4y ago
  Maybe they should? Already most companies do the absolute least OSHA lets them get away with (and often not even that...)
  - FL410 4y ago
    What do you expect them to do, especially considering legal and healthcare/PHI constraints?
    - heavyset_go 4y ago
      SpaceX is not a covered entity under HIPAA, they are under no PHI constraints that healthcare providers are under.
  - formerkrogemp 4y ago
    Over the decade I worked in retail and warehouses prior to becoming an accountant, I never once saw an OSHA inspector.
    - dghlsakjg 4y ago
      My impression is that OSHA tends to be reactive. Unless there was an incident or a report of unsafe activity you aren't going to see OSHA.
- fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
  It gets clicks!
chrisfosterelli 4y ago
The article appears to use these individual cases to draw the conclusion that "speed and competitive pressure in the private space race make workplaces necessarily unsafe". While tragic, I don't know how a few individual cases can show that. Is there any actual statistics that support that claim? The article says that at least 24 workers have been killed while in the space industry since 1980. Compare that to coal fatalities, of which there were nearly 2,000 fatalities over the same period. SpaceX has 12,000 people and are making rockets so it seems like some degree of danger will be inherent. Of course this should be reduced where-ever possible, but if the claim is that the space industry is unnecessarily unsafe then I'm not sure that's convincing.
- kelnos 4y ago
  > if the claim is that the space industry is unnecessarily unsafe then I'm not sure that's convincing. The claim is that it's necessarily unsafe. You even quoted that part.
  - chrisfosterelli 4y ago
    It is worded funny in the quote. In the context of the entire article, the author is clearly saying that the "speed and and competitive pressure" are the casual factor for it becoming unsafe (i.e., given the requirement of going fast by higher ups, it is necessary to be unsafe). So he's implying that if they weren't so focused on speed and competitive pressure it could be more safe. There's where I get "unnecessarily unsafe" from, because in the author's perspective it's not necessary to prioritize speed and competition over safety. My point is that I don't think it's obviously unsafe at all, or at least could use some statistics to support his argument that it is.
    - s1artibartfast 4y ago
      There will always be risk/development tradeoff. You can play with the balance but the only way to bring it to zero is to stop development. That's not to say that improvements can't be made. The real question is how many of the injuries and deaths were preventable by following the guidelines that already exist, and are generally followed but not perfectly followed.
sohmsucks 4y ago
alfor 4y ago
We could compare against other industries. I am also wondering how many died of old age or depression in NASA while they were testing and scrubbing and delaying again. There is a risk to no progress and being overly cautious too.
- stytchwhy 4y ago
gnarbarian 4y ago
This is incredibly sad, but accidents happen. This is a good example of the type of incident which leads to procedures and reforms which will erode the agility of the organization. It's entropy, and it happens to every org. This is a big reason why NASA has a hard time executing compared to spacex. I really see this as part of the natural cycle of any org. Nimble companies grow, incidents happen, corruption happens, safeguards are put in place to prevent issues from recurring and before you know it, the company is no longer nimble.
- azmarks 4y ago
  Safeguards do not make a company less nimble and it's frankly embarrassing that people think that. We should not have to sacrifice people in the name of growth. And the thinking that it's ok to hurt people because it's a "natural cycle of any org" is ridiculous and should be ridiculed. Every company should have a culture of safety where accidents are investigated to determine what changes should be made to processes to ensure there is less harm if that type of accident happens again. That includes tech companies where an accident could be deleting a database or a space company where an accident is a pressure valve exploding.
  - gnarbarian 4y ago
    safeguards are always at odds with agility and latitude. can you devise a safeguard for this incident which wouldn't negatively impact both of these concepts?
giantg2 4y ago
What's the main point of this article? It seems like it's to question if we should go to space, but it uses a few examples of injury or death. How doe the accident rates compare to other things? Without that, it seems like there's nothing here. "SpaceX has made no announcement to the public or to its workers about his status" HIPAA and other legal compliance?
- unethical_ban 4y ago
  HIPAA!
- rhd 4y ago
  Is SpaceX a covered entity providing health care? If not, HIPAA is not at issue.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    Ok, then Americans with disabilities or whatever. The point is, most companies don't release this information and I believe there are legal reasons for that.
    - dghlsakjg 4y ago
      The legal reason isn't that they aren't allowed to, it is that it can only hurt them. Why would a company highlight failures if they don't have to? Especially when their statements can later be used against them in civil or criminal proceedings.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        I'm almost certain that FMLA, ADA, etc have provisions that require the employer to treat the information as confidential. Even things like contact tracing for covid keeps the person anonymous.
      - scrumbledober 4y ago
        This is the company that released a video of a bunch of their rockets exploding, "How not to land an orbital rocket booster". They are usually pretty open with their failures, at least in engineering. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ
toomanyrichies 4y ago
> SpaceX was fined $18,475 by OSHA for two safety violations, one of which was rated the highest penalty level of “serious” and a maximum gravity of 10. Am I reading this right? One of the two safety violations was rated the maximum gravity of 10, yet could not have had a penalty of more than $18,475? That is not even couch money for a company the size of SpaceX. I really hope I'm missing some critical piece of info which makes this all make sense. Someone please assuage my concerns here.
- malfist 4y ago
  Sounds like the cost of doing business to me. Yeah, we might kill someone, but think of the profits we could make!
  - bombcar 4y ago
    A known OSHA violation that wasn't fixed rapidly will be an absolute win for discovery in a workplace injury/wrongful death suit.
- thethirdone 4y ago
  There is a maximum of $14,502 per violation. If you are trying to maintain a decently safe workplace, I think a that is probably roughly appropriate for a serious mistake in safety. I believe if you have many ways in which your workplace is unsafe it would build up pretty quick. Willful or Repeated violations cost 10x more. And failing to fix something costs 14k per day. Source: https://www.osha.gov/penalties https://www.osha.gov/penalties
- elil17 4y ago
  OSHA penalties are laughably low. Willful and repeated violations only cost a maximum of $150k/per incident, while serious but non-willful/first time violations are capped at about $14k/incident. The real money can be in workers comp/lawsuits, but those damages are capped based on expected lifetime earnings or, if you're lucky, a multiple of expected lifetime earnings. What's really messed up is that courts typically use your demographics to calculate your expected lifetime earnings (e.g. if you're black you will get a smaller settlement than a white person because statistically black people earn less than the average person over their lifetimes). When I first read that I thought it could not possibly be true, that there had to be some vitiate that made it make sense, but it's just how it's typically done. Globally, protections for blue collar workers are crap. The US actually has pretty good worker protections all things considered (like, even compared to Europe).
kator 4y ago
While it is a sad story, it reminded me of a parallel issue with another "Race" for technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
mabbo 4y ago
The key question that everyone, especially SpaceX, should be asking is why was it even possible to run the test while Cabada was in an unsafe place? System and safety design- a topic that a rocketry company should be deeply familiar with- should lead us to solutions where bad things are exceedingly impossible. Where you have to be trying to cause an accident for it to happen. This should extend beyond the product being built itself, to the factory, to the R&D, to every part of the organization where danger exists. And when failure occurs, it behooves you to shout from the rooftop that you messed up, and show the world how you're making changes so it can't happen again. Being quiet about the failure of your system makes it sound a lot like you aren't planning to make any changes to it. It's a bad culture to start in a rocketry company.
- happyopossum 4y ago
  The idea that every accident can be prevented by delight is a ridiculous and utopian trope, and to demonize an entire corporate culture and group of 12k employees without any background information is the height of hubris. Nobody would ever design a ladder that cannot be climbed without a safety harness being properly worn, but many people are injured or killed in ladder accidents at workplaces every year. In your world that's a design failure, but out here in reality it's often carelessness or sheer bad luck.
  - karlmdavis 4y ago
    To extend that line of argument a bit, what about a more professional tool/system, e.g. cherry pickers? Doesn’t it seem reasonable to you to design and engineer cherry pickers such that the bucket can’t be moved unless a safety harness is attached?
    - happyopossum 4y ago
      > Doesn’t it seem reasonable to you to design and engineer cherry pickers such that the bucket can’t be moved unless a safety harness is attached? No - that seems unreasonable too, as there's no reasonable way for the cherry picker to know if the harness is being worn by anyone, so it's just safety theater.
snowwrestler 4y ago
Meta-comment here, but it’s somewhat notable that this is the very first link submitted to HN from Semafor, which is a new media company started by Justin Smith, formerly of Bloomberg and The Atlantic, and Ben Smith, formerly of The NY Times and founding editor of Buzzfeed News. And it hit the top of the front page—not bad for a first impression.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Right. I'd not heard of the organisation previously and did some exploring. The FT has a good background bit, also just released today. Paywall: <https://archive.ph/GkSjG https://archive.ph/GkSjG>
crystaln 4y ago
Somebody got hurt so the space race is unsafe… We should probably halt agriculture and cancel automobiles also. Also all injuries need a press release.
LegitShady 4y ago
[flagged]
- yreg 4y ago
csours 4y ago
Accidents happen in non-capitalist contexts as well. Reaching for that as a cause without any evidence is weak. Profit motive is like gravity - it's always there, in every society. It may have other names, like making your superior happy, but it's there. You have to guard against profit motive weakening your core values - you have to put up guard rails. If those guard rails are missing, that's very bad. If those guard rails are there, and people avoiding them is normalized, that's very bad. If those guard rails are there, and people get in trouble for avoiding them, that's very bad. If those guard rails are there, and you have a comprehensive process for reviewing incidents and updating rules and processes based on real world factors, then you're part of the way towards good safety culture. Safety culture is the decisions that individual team members and teams make. Safety culture is also the corporate process for evaluating incidents. And also the way that resources are or are not assigned when concerns are raised. And so many other things.
- ff317 4y ago
  This is exactly where those lofty Mission + Values statements come into play and why they're important when they're both written and lived well (as opposed to just some bland generic screed made from corporate buzzword bingo terms that everyone ignores). The Mission is what you're trying to achieve (the profit motive, in some form), and the Values are the guardrails. They say explicitly what things you won't sacrifice (like human rights and lives) in service of the mission. Having this stuff laid out clearly from the top down helps a lot with getting efforts to create and enforce those lower level processes taken seriously.
  - csours 4y ago
    And when teams ask for resources to fix issues, they have to get those resources. Its all very well for an executive to say those lofty things, it also has to be funded. Unfortunately, sometimes people in the middle just assume that saving money is more important; the CEO might have told them to allocate resources, but the request just got squashed along the way.
noasaservice 4y ago
https://revealnews.org/article/tesla-says-its-factory-is-safer-but-it-left-injuries-off-the-books/ https://revealnews.org/article/tesla-says-its-factory-is-saf... "(In 2017) The rate of serious injuries, requiring time off or a work restriction, was 30 percent worse than the previous year’s industry average."
H8crilA 4y ago
BTW, there is only one job that is not subjected to ionising radiation exposure limits: the astronaut. Radiation in space is just too damn strong, there's not much that can be done about it without spending high multiples of what's already being spent for manned space travel. Details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_ionizing_radiation_in_spaceflight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_ionizing_radiation_...
londons_explore 4y ago
I'm really surprised there aren't more accidents at spacex... They aren't following some well tested process that is well understood. They're trying new things that might go wrong in unexpected ways. Yet somehow their accident rates are still low. That's pretty impressive.
- hoseja 4y ago
  Don't let that stop hack journos from writing hit pieces anyway!
squokko 4y ago
Of the thousands of US workplace deaths per year, I wonder why this workplace injury (serious, but not fatal) gets an entire article? Hmm...
- 93po 4y ago
  It's owned by the same person who owns a car company that makes headlines every time their cars catch fire after a serious accident. It's very irresponsible of El*n to make lithium batteries that are capable of igniting when punctured and destroyed.
martyvis 4y ago
I just heard an interview on ABC Radio with The Guardian journalist Anne Davies about safety issues during the construction of the Sydney Metro rail system here in Australia. Amongst other things a 30 tonne train carriage transporting equipment travelled 1.5km uncontrolled in a half built tunnel and an escalator being installed at an underground station fell 4 floors. Unfortunately accidents happen in all industries despite combined effort of regulators, companies and employees. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/18/out-of-control-train-carriage-hurtled-15km-through-sydney-metro-tunnel-in-one-of-several-safety-incidents https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/18/out-o...
moffkalast 4y ago
- ArnoVW 4y ago
  Just because they got a 'penalty' of 18k$ does not mean that they did not pay liability.
- dang 4y ago
  Please don't start nationalistic flamewars, or any flamewars, on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    The comment is one more of national policy than nationalistic aspersion. I don't believe that commenting on the utter failure of national healthcare policy and implementation is a flamewar topic. It's certainly a significant element of this story.
    - 93po 4y ago
      It doesn't really lead to curious and interesting conversation though, which is sort of the bar for posting on HN
      - dredmorbius 4y ago
        Though that's true, it's not now dang chose to admonish. An additional concern of mine is that HN guidance tends strongly to reinforce a highly inequitable status quo. It comes quite close to tone-policing. I'm in favour of refining and improving messaging, but there's also acknowledgement of the inherent disadvantage of the disempowered, disenfranchised, and vulnerable.
        dredmorbius 4y ago
        Happened to come across this at Imgur. Pretty much a perfect summation: <https://imgur.com/gallery/MGq29D8 https://imgur.com/gallery/MGq29D8>
photochemsyn 4y ago
It's never a bad idea to compare a story like this to the overall work-related injury/fatality statistics: https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-injuries/number-and-rate-of-fatal-work-injuries-by-industry.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-inju... There's the absolute number of events to consider, plus the overall rate of injury to consider, the latter being more of a risk estimate. Here are the top three by a fair margin (first number is total deaths, second is rate is per 100,000 full time employees in that sector, for the year 2020): Construction: 1,008 10.2 Transportation and warehousing 805 13.4 Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting 511 21.5 I don't see any breakdown in that data for the space industry, but that's the kind of information that would put this report in some kind of context.
- ok_computer 4y ago
  With high tech manufacturing you’d want to compare against mature higher risk industries such as oil and gas, chemical, pharmaceutical manufacturing, food manufacturing, and semiconductors, plus military noncombat operations and military contractors. There are ideally engineering controls and standard operating procedures or documented deviations, even in research or pilot facilities. Construction and agriculture, apart from the design phase (like residential crafts, HVAC, industrial electricians or cement etc) do not have the same workplace standards as an industrial facility or field site with cohabitation of engineering, operations, and contractors. There are always exceptions with safe contractors and bad facilities. If you are routinely testing a pressure relief valve and there is not a documented procedure around this or a permit addressing limiting exposure to that energy that might be a problem in retrospect. Ideally, industries would operate in good faith of regulations and not just outside the envelope of punitive measures. But regulatory stuff is complicated and specific depending on location. I simply wanted to point out it would be helpful to compare incident statistics against common risk profile industries.
AtlasBarfed 4y ago
"Safe" jobs like cube farms where people don't exercise and destroy their neuromuscular systems over time? And the death rate is unlikely to be worse than: crab fishing, mining, petroleum extraction, manufacturing, etc. and... "semafor"? Never heard of this. This article reeks of "popular hotbutton company" + "drama" to drive clicks. The real issue is lack of universal healthcare of course.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Semafor is a new media venture which launched today. Its founders have strong former experience. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33252667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33252667>
groby_b 4y ago
So, the worst possible violation costs you $18K? I suppose you can afford a few of them if you're SpaceX. (Especially the way they pay - your salary comes pre-reduced for several violations/year)
billiam 4y ago
Appalling tone of conversation. Comparing a multibillion dollar high tech company's workplace safety procedures to street violence in poor parts of the US or in mechanized agriculture is insulting. SpaceX has tried to ignore this tragedy and their silence and opaqueness about it mean nothing will be learned that could prevent the next disaster.
- 93po 4y ago
  Could you talk more in depth about your experience with the safety processes that exist at SpaceX, and how the events around TFA had an impact on safety at SpaceX? Were you part of the team that investigated directly or did you only see the results of the internal investigation second hand? Can you tell me about which processes you'd specifically like to see impacted and how they fit into the workflow at hand? I'm interested to hear the data and information that went into your opinion that nothing will change.
kens 4y ago
I've always been sad for John Bjornstad and Forrest Cole who died in a Space Shuttle test in 1981 when they entered a nitrogen-filled compartment. Since they were workers and not astronauts, they are treated as footnotes and not heroes.
LightG 4y ago
Stop groaning and get back to work!!!
alsodumb 4y ago
"Relativity has a strong safety record relative to others in the industry, with just one OSHA safety inspection since it was founded in 2015. The inspection, spurred by an accident, did not result in a violation." Yeah sure, let's called Relativity safe while totally ignoring the fact that they have a team of 700 (compared to 12,000 at SpaceX), spent bulk of the last seven years working on 3D printing rocket parts taking VC money (unlike SpaceX, which rose to the leading and in some cases only launch provider in US), and never launched a rocket as of today. Oh and Relativity still had one OSHA inspection, where as SpaceX had a total of 5 health and safety violations since 2014. Perhaps the author needs to calibrate his mental picture of safety before calling Relativity relatively safe.
awad 4y ago
I'm not sure if it's because this is a particular engineering-learning crowd that is pro space or SpaceX or something else but the general lack of empathy toward a human being who has suffered is concerning when reading this thread, especially when you consider that this was in fact a very serious injury that could have been prevented with an appropriate adherence to safety protocol. Move fast and break things was a terrible mantra but it seems to have seeped in...or perhaps was always there.
- bottlepalm 4y ago
  Your empathy has you blinded to the real motive here, the author doesn’t give a damn about the person. ‘Move fast and break things’ which the article has made you believe that means human safety. Now that you’ve taken the bait it’s time to spread your misinformation to your friends. Maybe make some tweets. That’s how the media controls you and the narrative.
- uni_rule 4y ago
  If the history of avation is anything to go by, the incredibly stringent safety guidelines everybody must follow is not out of the goodness of their hearts but rather written by legislators in the blood of crash victims. The fact that NASA actually treats it's humans as not expendable must be the exception to the rule then. These companies won't mind literally shredding people to proceed faster than their competition unless they are actively forced not to. Having no regard for safety is a competitive advantage if the time saved allows a leg up over all competitors in such a fast moving market. Truly any concerns over a complete flippant ignorance of having safety procedures can be drowned out by an army of fanboys going "it's worth it because space" for free if everyone lets them.
mensetmanusman 4y ago
Just gave a talk at MIT and we discussed with the students how the hacking culture is essentially gone there due to the safety-at-all-costs mindset seeping into America. In my opinion, it’s partly due to being an aging society. (1960 median age ~ 29, today it is around 39). Young people are generally more willing to be risky and try new things, and since the adults have all the power and are more litigious, of course we will end up ruled by rules and regulations that only get more complicated and time consuming. Our society has never been safer, but we have used that comfort to be incredibly unhealthy/obese as well. Interesting times (possibly more boring times to come).

300 points by alphabetting 4y ago

This is a glimpse of the aerospace industry behind the curtain. Much of it is backed by the filipino and hispanic working class in LA. These guys live in the roughest neighborhoods and are in charge of precision assembly of human transport. I don't know the exact ratio, but maybe 5 technicians like him per office engineer.

xwdv 4y ago
- imadethis 4y ago
  What makes these workers “compromised” in your view?
  - xwdv 4y ago
    Overworked, underpaid, stressful living situations. Sometimes even loosely trained.
- thorncorona 4y ago
  I don’t feel like compromised is the right word here?
- kbelder 4y ago
  More of a testament to the workers.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    I don’t see how. Without the engineers, the workers wouldn’t have the techniques, designs or procedures to build such precise and complex machines.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> Much of it is backed by the filipino and hispanic working class in LA Most of the aerospace industry isn't in Los Angeles [1]. [1] https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172011.htm#st https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172011.htm#st
adolph 4y ago
What's wrong with folks who live in "the roughest neighborhoods" being "in charge of precision assembly of human transport?"
- bell-cot 4y ago
twawaaay 4y ago
SpaceX is a for profit organisation. You might find it hard to believe, but having select few design equipment and processes that will then be used by much less skilled and paid workers is how most production companies work. Now, I don't have any numbers. But if SpaceX is able to hire and maintain predominantly minority staff (assuming they are paid a reasonable wage) isn't it a win for those communities?
- fwip 4y ago
  I feel like Francisco Cabada probably doesn't count it as a win.
  - mensetmanusman 4y ago
    Not sure. Many people are happy to take risks to improve the lives of the next generation. I work in R&D and when my kids have asked if I could die at work, I say “yes” with a smile :)
  - twawaaay 4y ago
    Hire enough people to work around dangerous things and you will get accidents. The question really is whether the company is reasonably trying to prevent unnecessary risks and react with changes when accidents happen.

fayalargeau 4y ago

> The company’s silence on the incident is a particularly dramatic reflection of a core dynamic in America’s new space race: The unspoken truth that human lives are at play at every level. ???? Does a company need to make an announcement or public statement for every incident that occurs at work? There are risks at every job. How is this even an article-worthy?

TylerE 4y ago
Maybe they should? Already most companies do the absolute least OSHA lets them get away with (and often not even that...)
- FL410 4y ago
  What do you expect them to do, especially considering legal and healthcare/PHI constraints?
  - heavyset_go 4y ago
    SpaceX is not a covered entity under HIPAA, they are under no PHI constraints that healthcare providers are under.
- formerkrogemp 4y ago
  Over the decade I worked in retail and warehouses prior to becoming an accountant, I never once saw an OSHA inspector.
  - dghlsakjg 4y ago
    My impression is that OSHA tends to be reactive. Unless there was an incident or a report of unsafe activity you aren't going to see OSHA.
fdgsdfogijq 4y ago
It gets clicks!

chrisfosterelli 4y ago

The article appears to use these individual cases to draw the conclusion that "speed and competitive pressure in the private space race make workplaces necessarily unsafe". While tragic, I don't know how a few individual cases can show that. Is there any actual statistics that support that claim? The article says that at least 24 workers have been killed while in the space industry since 1980. Compare that to coal fatalities, of which there were nearly 2,000 fatalities over the same period. SpaceX has 12,000 people and are making rockets so it seems like some degree of danger will be inherent. Of course this should be reduced where-ever possible, but if the claim is that the space industry is unnecessarily unsafe then I'm not sure that's convincing.

kelnos 4y ago
> if the claim is that the space industry is unnecessarily unsafe then I'm not sure that's convincing. The claim is that it's necessarily unsafe. You even quoted that part.
- chrisfosterelli 4y ago
  It is worded funny in the quote. In the context of the entire article, the author is clearly saying that the "speed and and competitive pressure" are the casual factor for it becoming unsafe (i.e., given the requirement of going fast by higher ups, it is necessary to be unsafe). So he's implying that if they weren't so focused on speed and competitive pressure it could be more safe. There's where I get "unnecessarily unsafe" from, because in the author's perspective it's not necessary to prioritize speed and competition over safety. My point is that I don't think it's obviously unsafe at all, or at least could use some statistics to support his argument that it is.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    There will always be risk/development tradeoff. You can play with the balance but the only way to bring it to zero is to stop development. That's not to say that improvements can't be made. The real question is how many of the injuries and deaths were preventable by following the guidelines that already exist, and are generally followed but not perfectly followed.

sohmsucks 4y ago

alfor 4y ago

We could compare against other industries. I am also wondering how many died of old age or depression in NASA while they were testing and scrubbing and delaying again. There is a risk to no progress and being overly cautious too.

stytchwhy 4y ago

gnarbarian 4y ago

This is incredibly sad, but accidents happen. This is a good example of the type of incident which leads to procedures and reforms which will erode the agility of the organization. It's entropy, and it happens to every org. This is a big reason why NASA has a hard time executing compared to spacex. I really see this as part of the natural cycle of any org. Nimble companies grow, incidents happen, corruption happens, safeguards are put in place to prevent issues from recurring and before you know it, the company is no longer nimble.

azmarks 4y ago
Safeguards do not make a company less nimble and it's frankly embarrassing that people think that. We should not have to sacrifice people in the name of growth. And the thinking that it's ok to hurt people because it's a "natural cycle of any org" is ridiculous and should be ridiculed. Every company should have a culture of safety where accidents are investigated to determine what changes should be made to processes to ensure there is less harm if that type of accident happens again. That includes tech companies where an accident could be deleting a database or a space company where an accident is a pressure valve exploding.
- gnarbarian 4y ago
  safeguards are always at odds with agility and latitude. can you devise a safeguard for this incident which wouldn't negatively impact both of these concepts?

giantg2 4y ago

What's the main point of this article? It seems like it's to question if we should go to space, but it uses a few examples of injury or death. How doe the accident rates compare to other things? Without that, it seems like there's nothing here. "SpaceX has made no announcement to the public or to its workers about his status" HIPAA and other legal compliance?

unethical_ban 4y ago
HIPAA!
rhd 4y ago
Is SpaceX a covered entity providing health care? If not, HIPAA is not at issue.
- giantg2 4y ago
  Ok, then Americans with disabilities or whatever. The point is, most companies don't release this information and I believe there are legal reasons for that.
  - dghlsakjg 4y ago
    The legal reason isn't that they aren't allowed to, it is that it can only hurt them. Why would a company highlight failures if they don't have to? Especially when their statements can later be used against them in civil or criminal proceedings.
    - giantg2 4y ago
      I'm almost certain that FMLA, ADA, etc have provisions that require the employer to treat the information as confidential. Even things like contact tracing for covid keeps the person anonymous.
    - scrumbledober 4y ago
      This is the company that released a video of a bunch of their rockets exploding, "How not to land an orbital rocket booster". They are usually pretty open with their failures, at least in engineering. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ

toomanyrichies 4y ago

> SpaceX was fined $18,475 by OSHA for two safety violations, one of which was rated the highest penalty level of “serious” and a maximum gravity of 10. Am I reading this right? One of the two safety violations was rated the maximum gravity of 10, yet could not have had a penalty of more than $18,475? That is not even couch money for a company the size of SpaceX. I really hope I'm missing some critical piece of info which makes this all make sense. Someone please assuage my concerns here.

malfist 4y ago
Sounds like the cost of doing business to me. Yeah, we might kill someone, but think of the profits we could make!
- bombcar 4y ago
  A known OSHA violation that wasn't fixed rapidly will be an absolute win for discovery in a workplace injury/wrongful death suit.
thethirdone 4y ago
There is a maximum of $14,502 per violation. If you are trying to maintain a decently safe workplace, I think a that is probably roughly appropriate for a serious mistake in safety. I believe if you have many ways in which your workplace is unsafe it would build up pretty quick. Willful or Repeated violations cost 10x more. And failing to fix something costs 14k per day. Source: https://www.osha.gov/penalties https://www.osha.gov/penalties
elil17 4y ago
OSHA penalties are laughably low. Willful and repeated violations only cost a maximum of $150k/per incident, while serious but non-willful/first time violations are capped at about $14k/incident. The real money can be in workers comp/lawsuits, but those damages are capped based on expected lifetime earnings or, if you're lucky, a multiple of expected lifetime earnings. What's really messed up is that courts typically use your demographics to calculate your expected lifetime earnings (e.g. if you're black you will get a smaller settlement than a white person because statistically black people earn less than the average person over their lifetimes). When I first read that I thought it could not possibly be true, that there had to be some vitiate that made it make sense, but it's just how it's typically done. Globally, protections for blue collar workers are crap. The US actually has pretty good worker protections all things considered (like, even compared to Europe).

kator 4y ago

While it is a sad story, it reminded me of a parallel issue with another "Race" for technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core

mabbo 4y ago

The key question that everyone, especially SpaceX, should be asking is why was it even possible to run the test while Cabada was in an unsafe place? System and safety design- a topic that a rocketry company should be deeply familiar with- should lead us to solutions where bad things are exceedingly impossible. Where you have to be trying to cause an accident for it to happen. This should extend beyond the product being built itself, to the factory, to the R&D, to every part of the organization where danger exists. And when failure occurs, it behooves you to shout from the rooftop that you messed up, and show the world how you're making changes so it can't happen again. Being quiet about the failure of your system makes it sound a lot like you aren't planning to make any changes to it. It's a bad culture to start in a rocketry company.

happyopossum 4y ago
The idea that every accident can be prevented by delight is a ridiculous and utopian trope, and to demonize an entire corporate culture and group of 12k employees without any background information is the height of hubris. Nobody would ever design a ladder that cannot be climbed without a safety harness being properly worn, but many people are injured or killed in ladder accidents at workplaces every year. In your world that's a design failure, but out here in reality it's often carelessness or sheer bad luck.
- karlmdavis 4y ago
  To extend that line of argument a bit, what about a more professional tool/system, e.g. cherry pickers? Doesn’t it seem reasonable to you to design and engineer cherry pickers such that the bucket can’t be moved unless a safety harness is attached?
  - happyopossum 4y ago
    > Doesn’t it seem reasonable to you to design and engineer cherry pickers such that the bucket can’t be moved unless a safety harness is attached? No - that seems unreasonable too, as there's no reasonable way for the cherry picker to know if the harness is being worn by anyone, so it's just safety theater.

snowwrestler 4y ago

Meta-comment here, but it’s somewhat notable that this is the very first link submitted to HN from Semafor, which is a new media company started by Justin Smith, formerly of Bloomberg and The Atlantic, and Ben Smith, formerly of The NY Times and founding editor of Buzzfeed News. And it hit the top of the front page—not bad for a first impression.

dredmorbius 4y ago
Right. I'd not heard of the organisation previously and did some exploring. The FT has a good background bit, also just released today. Paywall: <https://archive.ph/GkSjG https://archive.ph/GkSjG>

crystaln 4y ago

Somebody got hurt so the space race is unsafe… We should probably halt agriculture and cancel automobiles also. Also all injuries need a press release.

LegitShady 4y ago

[flagged]

yreg 4y ago

csours 4y ago

Accidents happen in non-capitalist contexts as well. Reaching for that as a cause without any evidence is weak. Profit motive is like gravity - it's always there, in every society. It may have other names, like making your superior happy, but it's there. You have to guard against profit motive weakening your core values - you have to put up guard rails. If those guard rails are missing, that's very bad. If those guard rails are there, and people avoiding them is normalized, that's very bad. If those guard rails are there, and people get in trouble for avoiding them, that's very bad. If those guard rails are there, and you have a comprehensive process for reviewing incidents and updating rules and processes based on real world factors, then you're part of the way towards good safety culture. Safety culture is the decisions that individual team members and teams make. Safety culture is also the corporate process for evaluating incidents. And also the way that resources are or are not assigned when concerns are raised. And so many other things.

ff317 4y ago
This is exactly where those lofty Mission + Values statements come into play and why they're important when they're both written and lived well (as opposed to just some bland generic screed made from corporate buzzword bingo terms that everyone ignores). The Mission is what you're trying to achieve (the profit motive, in some form), and the Values are the guardrails. They say explicitly what things you won't sacrifice (like human rights and lives) in service of the mission. Having this stuff laid out clearly from the top down helps a lot with getting efforts to create and enforce those lower level processes taken seriously.
- csours 4y ago
  And when teams ask for resources to fix issues, they have to get those resources. Its all very well for an executive to say those lofty things, it also has to be funded. Unfortunately, sometimes people in the middle just assume that saving money is more important; the CEO might have told them to allocate resources, but the request just got squashed along the way.

noasaservice 4y ago

https://revealnews.org/article/tesla-says-its-factory-is-safer-but-it-left-injuries-off-the-books/ https://revealnews.org/article/tesla-says-its-factory-is-saf... "(In 2017) The rate of serious injuries, requiring time off or a work restriction, was 30 percent worse than the previous year’s industry average."

H8crilA 4y ago

BTW, there is only one job that is not subjected to ionising radiation exposure limits: the astronaut. Radiation in space is just too damn strong, there's not much that can be done about it without spending high multiples of what's already being spent for manned space travel. Details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_ionizing_radiation_in_spaceflight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_ionizing_radiation_...

londons_explore 4y ago

I'm really surprised there aren't more accidents at spacex... They aren't following some well tested process that is well understood. They're trying new things that might go wrong in unexpected ways. Yet somehow their accident rates are still low. That's pretty impressive.

hoseja 4y ago
Don't let that stop hack journos from writing hit pieces anyway!

squokko 4y ago

Of the thousands of US workplace deaths per year, I wonder why this workplace injury (serious, but not fatal) gets an entire article? Hmm...

93po 4y ago
It's owned by the same person who owns a car company that makes headlines every time their cars catch fire after a serious accident. It's very irresponsible of El*n to make lithium batteries that are capable of igniting when punctured and destroyed.

martyvis 4y ago

I just heard an interview on ABC Radio with The Guardian journalist Anne Davies about safety issues during the construction of the Sydney Metro rail system here in Australia. Amongst other things a 30 tonne train carriage transporting equipment travelled 1.5km uncontrolled in a half built tunnel and an escalator being installed at an underground station fell 4 floors. Unfortunately accidents happen in all industries despite combined effort of regulators, companies and employees. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/18/out-of-control-train-carriage-hurtled-15km-through-sydney-metro-tunnel-in-one-of-several-safety-incidents https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/18/out-o...

moffkalast 4y ago

ArnoVW 4y ago
Just because they got a 'penalty' of 18k$ does not mean that they did not pay liability.
dang 4y ago
Please don't start nationalistic flamewars, or any flamewars, on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  The comment is one more of national policy than nationalistic aspersion. I don't believe that commenting on the utter failure of national healthcare policy and implementation is a flamewar topic. It's certainly a significant element of this story.
  - 93po 4y ago
    It doesn't really lead to curious and interesting conversation though, which is sort of the bar for posting on HN
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      Though that's true, it's not now dang chose to admonish. An additional concern of mine is that HN guidance tends strongly to reinforce a highly inequitable status quo. It comes quite close to tone-policing. I'm in favour of refining and improving messaging, but there's also acknowledgement of the inherent disadvantage of the disempowered, disenfranchised, and vulnerable.
      - dredmorbius 4y ago
        Happened to come across this at Imgur. Pretty much a perfect summation: <https://imgur.com/gallery/MGq29D8 https://imgur.com/gallery/MGq29D8>

photochemsyn 4y ago

It's never a bad idea to compare a story like this to the overall work-related injury/fatality statistics: https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-injuries/number-and-rate-of-fatal-work-injuries-by-industry.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/census-of-fatal-occupational-inju... There's the absolute number of events to consider, plus the overall rate of injury to consider, the latter being more of a risk estimate. Here are the top three by a fair margin (first number is total deaths, second is rate is per 100,000 full time employees in that sector, for the year 2020): Construction: 1,008 10.2 Transportation and warehousing 805 13.4 Agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting 511 21.5 I don't see any breakdown in that data for the space industry, but that's the kind of information that would put this report in some kind of context.

ok_computer 4y ago
With high tech manufacturing you’d want to compare against mature higher risk industries such as oil and gas, chemical, pharmaceutical manufacturing, food manufacturing, and semiconductors, plus military noncombat operations and military contractors. There are ideally engineering controls and standard operating procedures or documented deviations, even in research or pilot facilities. Construction and agriculture, apart from the design phase (like residential crafts, HVAC, industrial electricians or cement etc) do not have the same workplace standards as an industrial facility or field site with cohabitation of engineering, operations, and contractors. There are always exceptions with safe contractors and bad facilities. If you are routinely testing a pressure relief valve and there is not a documented procedure around this or a permit addressing limiting exposure to that energy that might be a problem in retrospect. Ideally, industries would operate in good faith of regulations and not just outside the envelope of punitive measures. But regulatory stuff is complicated and specific depending on location. I simply wanted to point out it would be helpful to compare incident statistics against common risk profile industries.

AtlasBarfed 4y ago

"Safe" jobs like cube farms where people don't exercise and destroy their neuromuscular systems over time? And the death rate is unlikely to be worse than: crab fishing, mining, petroleum extraction, manufacturing, etc. and... "semafor"? Never heard of this. This article reeks of "popular hotbutton company" + "drama" to drive clicks. The real issue is lack of universal healthcare of course.

dredmorbius 4y ago
Semafor is a new media venture which launched today. Its founders have strong former experience. See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33252667 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33252667>

groby_b 4y ago

So, the worst possible violation costs you $18K? I suppose you can afford a few of them if you're SpaceX. (Especially the way they pay - your salary comes pre-reduced for several violations/year)

billiam 4y ago

Appalling tone of conversation. Comparing a multibillion dollar high tech company's workplace safety procedures to street violence in poor parts of the US or in mechanized agriculture is insulting. SpaceX has tried to ignore this tragedy and their silence and opaqueness about it mean nothing will be learned that could prevent the next disaster.

93po 4y ago
Could you talk more in depth about your experience with the safety processes that exist at SpaceX, and how the events around TFA had an impact on safety at SpaceX? Were you part of the team that investigated directly or did you only see the results of the internal investigation second hand? Can you tell me about which processes you'd specifically like to see impacted and how they fit into the workflow at hand? I'm interested to hear the data and information that went into your opinion that nothing will change.

kens 4y ago

I've always been sad for John Bjornstad and Forrest Cole who died in a Space Shuttle test in 1981 when they entered a nitrogen-filled compartment. Since they were workers and not astronauts, they are treated as footnotes and not heroes.

LightG 4y ago

Stop groaning and get back to work!!!

alsodumb 4y ago

"Relativity has a strong safety record relative to others in the industry, with just one OSHA safety inspection since it was founded in 2015. The inspection, spurred by an accident, did not result in a violation." Yeah sure, let's called Relativity safe while totally ignoring the fact that they have a team of 700 (compared to 12,000 at SpaceX), spent bulk of the last seven years working on 3D printing rocket parts taking VC money (unlike SpaceX, which rose to the leading and in some cases only launch provider in US), and never launched a rocket as of today. Oh and Relativity still had one OSHA inspection, where as SpaceX had a total of 5 health and safety violations since 2014. Perhaps the author needs to calibrate his mental picture of safety before calling Relativity relatively safe.

awad 4y ago

I'm not sure if it's because this is a particular engineering-learning crowd that is pro space or SpaceX or something else but the general lack of empathy toward a human being who has suffered is concerning when reading this thread, especially when you consider that this was in fact a very serious injury that could have been prevented with an appropriate adherence to safety protocol. Move fast and break things was a terrible mantra but it seems to have seeped in...or perhaps was always there.

bottlepalm 4y ago
Your empathy has you blinded to the real motive here, the author doesn’t give a damn about the person. ‘Move fast and break things’ which the article has made you believe that means human safety. Now that you’ve taken the bait it’s time to spread your misinformation to your friends. Maybe make some tweets. That’s how the media controls you and the narrative.
uni_rule 4y ago
If the history of avation is anything to go by, the incredibly stringent safety guidelines everybody must follow is not out of the goodness of their hearts but rather written by legislators in the blood of crash victims. The fact that NASA actually treats it's humans as not expendable must be the exception to the rule then. These companies won't mind literally shredding people to proceed faster than their competition unless they are actively forced not to. Having no regard for safety is a competitive advantage if the time saved allows a leg up over all competitors in such a fast moving market. Truly any concerns over a complete flippant ignorance of having safety procedures can be drowned out by an army of fanboys going "it's worth it because space" for free if everyone lets them.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Just gave a talk at MIT and we discussed with the students how the hacking culture is essentially gone there due to the safety-at-all-costs mindset seeping into America. In my opinion, it’s partly due to being an aging society. (1960 median age ~ 29, today it is around 39). Young people are generally more willing to be risky and try new things, and since the adults have all the power and are more litigious, of course we will end up ruled by rules and regulations that only get more complicated and time consuming. Our society has never been safer, but we have used that comfort to be incredibly unhealthy/obese as well. Interesting times (possibly more boring times to come).