Edited by Deepali Verma
Elon Musk’s SpaceX finds itself in the middle of a negligence lawsuit brought by the wife of a worker whose skull was fractured during a 2022 rocket engine malfunction.
The Jan. 18, 2022, engine malfunction involving Francisco Cabada was among the worker injuries listed in the Reuters investigation of SpaceX late last year. Reuters has documented close to 600 previously unreported workplace injuries at Musk’s rocket company such as crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions, head and eye injuries and one death.
Ydy Cabada, wife of Francisco Cabada, filed the lawsuit in a state court in Los Angeles, California, last week on behalf of her husband, who still is in a coma more than two years later. There is no previous report of the lawsuit.
SpaceX yet has not responded to questions about the lawsuit.
Ydy Cabada’s lawyer, Michael Rand, has refused to comment.
Cabada was subjected to an injury when part of a Raptor V2 engine broke away during pressure testing at the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California. The part, which was a fuel-controller assembly cover, careened into the SpaceX technician’s head, which resulted in his skull getting fractured.
Former SpaceX employees, in knowledge of the accident, told Reuters the incident highlighted systemic problems at SpaceX.
The sources further informed Reuters that senior managers at the Hawthorne site were repeatedly warned regarding the dangers of rushing the engine’s development, combined with inadequate training of staff and testing of components. The part that struck the worker had its flaw discovered, but was not fixed before the testing, said the employees.
SpaceX had no comment about the Reuters investigation of the worker injuries, and had no response to detailed questions about the Cabada case. The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, having paid SpaceX $11.8 billion till now as a private space contractor, did not comment on the lawsuit.
SpaceX’s Raptor engines power Starship, the company’s next-generation rocket built to send satellites and humans into space. NASA has plans to make use of this rocket to land humans on the moon sometime this decade.
