by Marisa Taylor and Joey Roulette
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – SpaceX, the space company founded by Elon Musk, is the target of a negligence suit filed by the wife of an employee injured two years ago by the failure of a rocket engine part.
The accident suffered by Francisco Cabada on January 18, 2022 is among some 600 work accidents recorded by Reuters in an investigation published last November, including crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions, burns to the eyes or to head and one death.
His wife, Ydy Cabada, filed a lawsuit last week in state court in Los Angeles, Calif., on behalf of her husband, who suffered a fractured skull and remains in a coma two years after the incident. .
SpaceX did not respond to questions about the complaint. Ydy Cabada’s lawyer, Michael Rand, declined to comment.
Francisco Cabada was injured when a part of a Raptor V2 engine broke during a pressure test at a SpaceX factory in Hawthorne, California, and lodged in his skull.
This accident illustrates systemic problems within the company, former SpaceX employees said.
The sources told Reuters that managers at the Hawthorne site had been repeatedly warned about the risks of rampant engine development without adequate staff training and component testing.
The part that injured Francisco Cabada had an anomaly that had been detected, but not repaired, before the accident, they said.
SpaceX did not comment on the November Reuters investigation or respond to a series of questions about the Francisco Cabada accident.
NASA, which has so far paid $11.8 billion to SpaceX as a service provider, did not immediately comment.
The Raptor engines are intended for SpaceX’s Starship rocket, which is supposed to send satellites and astronauts into space.
(Jean-Stéphane Brosse for the French version)
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