REGISTER NOW Starbase, which plays a central role in SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s mission to make life multi-planetary, is an outlier in the company and across the industry as a whole. Its TRIR topped out at 4.27 injuries per 100 workers in 2024, when it employed an average of 2,690 workers, according to the data submitted to OSHA. Injured Starbase employees were unable to perform their normal job duties for a total of 3,558 restricted-duty days, plus 656 lost-time days where injuries made them unable to work at all. Starbase is classified by the U.S. government as a space vehicle manufacturing operation. The injury rate in this sector has fallen dramatically since 1994, dropping from 4.2 injuries per 100 workers to 0.7 injuries per 100 workers in 2023, according to historical data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (BLS calculates these rates through its annual company surveys, which asks for the same information found in OSHA’s worker injury forms.) But despite major changes in safety processes across the industry, Starbase is closer to the rates of 30 years ago. The injury rate across all of SpaceX’s manufacturing facilities — which includes an engine development and testing site in McGregor, Texas; a Starlink satellite manufacturing complex in Bastrop, Texas; the Falcon rocket complex in Hawthorne, California; and another satellite manufacturing site in Redmond, Washington — is 2.28. These other facilities report lower TRIR rates, though most still exceed the industry averages. For instance, 2024 data shows TRIR rates 2.48 at McGregor, 3.49 at Bastrop, 1.43 at Hawthorne, 2.89 at the Redmond site. The 2024 TRIR for aerospace manufacturing as a whole is 1.6. SpaceX also operates several non-manufacturing sites, including barge operations off both coasts, offices in Sunnyvale, California, and launch sites at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Space Force Base. Former OSHA Chief of Staff Debbie Berkowitz told TechCrunch via email that Starbase’s TRIR “is a red flag that there are serious safety issues that need to be addressed.” However, there is a debate among safety professionals about whether TRIR is the most reliable metric for assessing and predicting injury rates, particularly serious incidents like fatalities, and especially for small companies. A recent paper on TRIR questioned its statistical validity and advocated that organizations use alternative measures of safety performance instead. Of the 14 OSHA inspections at SpaceX facilities over the past four years, six involved accidents and injuries at Starbase. That includes a partial finger amputation in 2021 and a crane collapse in June 2025. The latter inspection is still ongoing. Investigations by other news outlets including Reuters have uncovered hundreds of previously unreported worker injuries, including crushed limbs and one fatality. The 2024 injury rate at Starbase marks an improvement to that of the prior year, which topped out at 5.9 injuries per 100 workers in 2023 and 4.8 injuries in 2022. But it still leads among SpaceX’s land-based facilities, and is second overall only to its west coast booster recovery operations, which has a TRIR of 7.6. OSHA confirmed TechCrunch’s calculation of Starbase’s TRIR over email, but otherwise did not respond to questions regarding that location’s injury rate. SpaceX did not respond to request for comment. NASA’s stake