According to company workers safety records reviewed by TechCrunch, SpareX employees are more likely to get injured while working at Starbase, while working at Starbase.
Starbase is a vast launch and manufacturing site recently incorporated as its own Texas City, and recorded an injury rate that was nearly six times higher than the average for comparable space vehicle manufacturing outfits and nearly three times higher than the average for aerospace manufacturing in 2024, according to Occupational Safety and Health Management (OSHA) data released in May. Its oversized injury rates have been ongoing since 2019, when SpaceX began sharing Starbase injuries data with federal regulators.
Starbase is home to SpaceX’s most ambitious programs. It is a Starship called a completely reusable and super heavy rocket. The company is moving at the pace of Breakneck to bring Starship online and online to launch Starlink Internet satellites and other payloads.
Since Starship’s first orbital test in April 2023, SpaceX has attempted eight additional integrated flights. During three of these tests, the company made history by catching a huge, super heavy booster with a “chopstick” arm attached to the launch tower.
Data suggests that rapid advancements in SpaceX are costly. And while the injury rate alone does not provide a complete picture of Starbase’s safety culture, they offer rare glimpses into the working conditions of major space companies around the world.
Decompose the star base number
OSHA uses a standardized safety metric called Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR) to measure company safety records and compares them with industry peers such as Blue Origin and the United Launch Alliance. There are restrictions on published data. It does not distinguish between minor injuries such as stitching and serious cases such as amputation.
TechCrunch calculated the TRIR based on that data. This includes the total number of incidents and total hours that SpaceX employees work on each site.
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Playing a central role in its mission to make SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s life multiplanetary, Starbase is an outlier across the company and industry. According to data submitted to OSHA, its TRIR was the top of the team with injuries of 4.27 per 100 workers in 2024, which averaged 2,690 workers. Injured Star Base employees were unable to perform their normal duties during a total of 3,558 limited working days and 656 lost days when injuries were unable to work at all.
Starbase is classified by the US government as a space vehicle manufacturing business. Historical data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that the injury rate in the sector has declined dramatically since 1994, down from 4.2 injuries per 100 workers in 2023 to 0.7 injuries per 100 workers in 2023. (BLS calculates these fees through an annual company survey seeking the same information found on OSHA workers’ injuries forms.) However, despite major changes in safety processes across the industry, Starbase is close to the rate it was 30 years ago.
Injury rates for all SpaceX manufacturing facilities, including engine development and testing sites at Texas McGregor. Starlink satellite manufacturing complex in Bastrop, Texas. Falcon Rocket Complex in Hawthorn, California. Another satellite manufacturing site in Redmond, Washington is 2.28.
These other facilities report lower TRIR rates, but most are above industry averages. For example, the 2024 data show a TRIR rate of 2.48 for McGregor, a 3.49 for Bastrop, a 1.43 for Hawthorn, and a 2.89 for Redmond. The overall 2024 TRIR for Aerospace Manufacturing is 1.6.
SpaceX also operates several non-manufacturing sites, including virge operations off the coast of both coasts. Office in Sunnyvale, California. Release site for Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Space Force based.
Former OSHA Chief of Staff Debbie Berkowitz told TechCrunch via email that Starbase’s Trir “is a risky flag that there are serious safety issues that need to be addressed.”
However, there is debate among safe experts as to whether TRIR is the most reliable indicator for assessing and predicting serious cases such as injuries, especially mortality rates, and the most reliable indicator, especially for small and medium-sized businesses. A recent paper on TRIR questioned its statistical validity and proposed that organizations use alternative measures of safety performance instead.
Of the 14 OSHA tests at SpaceX facilities over the past four years, six accidents and Starbase injuries were involved. This includes partial finger amputation in 2021 and crane collapse in June 2025. The latter test is still underway. Investigations by other news outlets, including Reuters, reveal the injuries of hundreds of previously unreported workers, including crushed limbs and one fatality.
The 2024 injury rate at Starbase was 5.9 workers per 100 people and 4.8 injuries per 100 people in 2023, only the West Coast booster recovery project, with 7.6 TRIR.
OSHA confirmed that TechCrunch’s Starbase TRIR was calculated via email, but otherwise it did not respond to questions about the injury rate at that location. SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.
NASA’s interests
NASA has a major interest in the development of Starship. The agency is hoping to use rockets to bring humans back to the moon by the end of the decade, paying more than $4 billion to SpaceX for a two-crew spaceship flight to the moon.
The Starship Lander contract and SpaceX’s contract for commercial crew services to the International Space Station contain certain provisions that allow the agency to take action in the event of a serious safety violation, such as a fatal or “intentional” or “repeated” OSHA violation.
A sustained high TRIR rate can be evidence of safety issues, but it does not fall under the contract’s definition of “major safety violations” rather than an automatic trigger of action.
“NASA frequently interacts with partners, including SpaceX, to ensure safety from a Mission Assurance perspective, and continues to communicate regularly with the company during normal contract management,” a NASA spokesperson told TechCrunch in response to questions about the company’s TRIR. “Safety is paramount to the success of NASA’s mission. Our agents work with all our commercial partners to continue to build and maintain a healthy culture of safety.”
Among the rocket makers in which the vehicles are operating, Starbase remains the leading pack. At ULA’s manufacturing facility in Decatur, Alabama, the TRIR is injured 1.12 people per 100 workers. The price is 1.09 at Blue Origin’s rocket park on the Florida coast.
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