Segnalo una lunga e interessante inchiesta di Reuters dedicata alle condizioni di sicurezza negli stabilimenti di SpaceX.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/spacex-musk-safety/
Through interviews and government records, the news organization documented at least 600 injuries of SpaceX workers since 2014.
Many were serious or disabling. The records included reports of more than 100 workers suffering cuts or lacerations, 29 with broken bones or dislocations, 17 whose hands or fingers were “crushed,” and nine with head injuries, including one skull fracture, four concussions and one traumatic brain injury. The cases also included five burns, five electrocutions, eight accidents that led to amputations, 12 injuries involving multiple unspecified body parts, and seven workers with eye injuries. Others were relatively minor, including more than 170 reports of strains or sprains. …
… The more than 600 SpaceX injuries Reuters documented represent only a portion of the total case count, a figure that is not publicly available. OSHA has required companies to report their total number of injuries annually since 2016, but SpaceX facilities failed to submit reports for most of those years. About two-thirds of the injuries Reuters uncovered came in years when SpaceX did not report that annual data, which OSHA collects to help prioritize on-site inspections of potentially dangerous workplaces.
E’ riportata anche una antologia di incidenti, più o meno gravi, dovuti alla mancata implementazione o al mancato rispetto di procedure di sicurezza.
One severe injury in January 2022 resulted from a series of safety failures that illustrate systemic problems at SpaceX, according to eight former SpaceX employees familiar with the accident. In that case, a part flew off during pressure testing of a Raptor V2 rocket engine – fracturing the skull of employee Francisco Cabada and putting him in a coma …
… Senior managers were repeatedly warned for at least a year before the accident that pressure-testing crews were not following standard worker-safety protocols, such as providing protective barriers or clearing personnel from the testing area, according to a former employee familiar with the matter. Such testing should be conducted with a “boom box” covering the whole engine to protect workers, the employee said. At one point, managers rejected a new training program, written and proposed by pressure-testing staff, on the grounds that it would cause delays, according to the source and a document reviewed by Reuters.