SpaceX employees have put their lives on the line to meet the aggressive pace of work that Chief Executive Elon Musk has demanded in pursuit of a Mars mission, according to a Reuters investigation.
The report documented over 600 previously undisclosed workplace injuries at SpaceX facilities since 2014, which Reuters said are only a part of the total number that is not publicly available.
Reuters examined injury logs and public records from the company’s six biggest facilities. SpaceX had not reported much of the injury data previously, in violation of regulatory standards. The investigation also included interviews with dozens of current and former SpaceX employees.
Among the injury data that Reuters gathered, over 100 workers experienced cuts or lacerations, 29 broke or dislocated bones, 17 had their hands and fingers crushed and nine had some form of serious head injury.
If we can’t save the Earth from becoming inhabitable, what chance do we have of making Mars habitable? I doubt we’ll even see a self-sustaining colony off planet during our lifetimes. And it’ll cost a fortune to supply a colony on Mars, so my guess is that we’ll use a lunar colony or a space station to figure out the self-sustaining part before starting a permanent settlement on Mars.
And even then, it would still probably be the toughest kind of living humans have ever experienced.
the only realistic long-term lunar or martian base is underground. Luna has giant lava tubes we can use - on Mars it’ll probably just be tunnels, or filled in asteroid craters. there’s no way to prevent massive irradiation from cosmic rays or micrometeorite impacts otherwise. it’s not as sexy as surface-level bases though so you’ll never see it described as such.
not sure what the draw for lunar or martian bases is though, the minerals are far easier to get to in the asteroid belt.
*uninhabitable
We want to be able to inhabit the Earth