Elon Musk’s SpaceX is facing a negligence lawsuit brought by the wife of a worker whose skull was fractured during a 2022 rocket engine malfunction.

His wife, Ydy Cabada, filed the lawsuit in a state court in Los Angeles, California, last week on behalf of her husband, who remains in a coma more than two years later.

I feel like if NASA had done something like this 2 years ago, it would have made headlines, there would have been an investigation, safety measures would have been implemented, and we would all be better off.

I also don’t think that NASA would have done something like this, considering:

The Jan. 18, 2022, engine malfunction involving Francisco Cabada was among the worker injuries detailed in a Reuters investigation of SpaceX late last year. Reuters documented at least 600 previously unreported workplace injuries at Musk’s rocket company: crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions, head and eye injuries and one death.

SpaceX may be sexy and appealing to some given Elon’s showboating and the cheaper price tag, but that’s just in terms of dollars. In reality, the price is much higher.

Cabada was injured when part of a Raptor V2 engine broke away during pressure testing at the SpaceX facility in Hawthorne, California. The part, a fuel-controller assembly cover, careened into the SpaceX technician’s head, fracturing his skull.

[…]

The sources told Reuters that senior managers at the Hawthorne site were repeatedly warned about the dangers of rushing the engine’s development, along with inadequate training of staff and testing of components. The part that failed and struck the worker had a flaw that was discovered, but not fixed, before the testing, employees said.

Doesn’t look good at all for SpaceX