Elon Musk had initially said he would run his companies with robots because human life was overrated. When he failed at that, he told reporters it changed his mind about human life having value.

Tesla then became known for gaming human safety regulations, being far worse than other companies and unsafe for workers.

Tesla Had 3 Times as Many OSHA Violations as the 10 Largest US Plants Combined

SpaceX is even worse, as it now has been found to be unsafe for workers, following investigations of a preventable death.

It’s unclear whether SpaceX CEO Elon Musk was at Starbase—a name now used both for the newfound company town and the company’s production and launch facilities near Boca Chica Beach—on the day Bautista died. His private jet’s flight log shows his plane flying from Los Angeles to Brownsville on May 21, six days after the incident, and returning to California on May 22, the same day as the last Starship launch. The Starship exploded on May 22, prompting another mishap investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration. Musk hasn’t publicly commented on Bautista’s death. Cameron County Sheriff Manuel Treviño told the Observer in an email that the law enforcement agency gave all the evidence it collected to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

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Bautista’s death is the first worker fatality at SpaceX’s South Texas facilities, but there have been numerous injuries there in the last few years. Just among its own employees—not including those working for contractors on-site—SpaceX saw 427 injuries and 9 respiratory illnesses between January 6, 2022, and June 10, 2025, according to documents SpaceX filed with OSHA and acquired by the Observer through a records request. These injuries included concussions, second-degree burns, partial finger amputations, hernias, dislocations, crushed hands, and broken ribs, legs, and ankles.

One of the reasons given for SpaceX in Texas being so much worse than the national average is that it’s not in California. Elon Musk infamously complained to California that he disliked their worker safety regulations. The death and injury of workers in his Texas operations show exactly what he intended.

The company’s facility in Hawthorne, California, which has more than twice the employees of Starbase, has less than half the injury rate of the South Texas site. OSHA confirmed these calculations as accurate when asked by the Observer.