A worker lost three fingers earlier this month at SpaceX’s Starlink manufacturing campus in Bastrop County, just east of Austin, and federal safety inspectors have opened an investigation into how it happened. The amputation occurred on Oct. 12 at 858 FM 1209, the address where SpaceX builds the hardware that connects customers to its satellite internet service.
The worker’s injury was reported by the San Antonio Express-News, which cited Department of Labor records describing the amputation of three fingers at the Bastrop site. Federal workplace safety inspectors began looking into the cause of the injury on Oct. 16, according to the same report, and the agency has up to six months to complete its findings. Records reviewed by the paper do not specify whether the injured person worked directly for SpaceX or for a contractor, nor whether the incident happened during construction, manufacturing or some other activity at the sprawling facility.
SpaceX has medical and transport capabilities on site at the Bastrop campus, the Express-News reported, though Bastrop County emergency services district officials said county first responders did not respond, and the Bastrop County Sheriff’s Office did not reply to the paper’s query about its own response. Per the same account, the amputation marks the fifth such injury reported at a SpaceX facility in Texas since 2021, according to OSHA.
A Growing Hub for Starlink Hardware
The Bastrop complex, which opened in 2023, has expanded rapidly alongside Starlink’s rising popularity and Elon Musk’s push to grow manufacturing capacity there. SpaceX announced a $280 million investment in the site last year, a project expected to create more than 400 jobs and supported by a $17.3 million grant from the state’s Semiconductor Innovation Fund, according to earlier Express-News reporting. Under that plan, SpaceX intends to grow the facility’s footprint by 1 million square feet over three years to produce Starlink terminal kits, component parts and advanced silicon products, according to REBusinessOnline.
OSHA’s Broader Record With SpaceX
Federal workplace safety regulators have investigated SpaceX sites across the country at least 16 times since 2021, issuing 17 violations in Texas, Washington and California, the Express-News has separately reported in a piece examining OSHA’s handling of a worker hospitalization report. Eight of those investigations and eight of those violations trace back to Starbase, the company’s South Texas launch site, where at least three OSHA investigations remain ongoing, including ones tied to falls. One of those falls, in May, led to the death of a 25-year-old SpaceX contractor.
Starbase has also seen a string of amputation cases. OSHA fined SpaceX $43,506 over a 2021 incident in which a worker’s hand was crushed by steel tubing, resulting in the partial amputation of his ring finger, and SpaceX was not cited in three other Starbase amputation incidents between April 2023 and June 2024, according to the Express-News. OSHA tracks amputations as one of a dozen categories of high-interest workplace injuries nationwide, and the agency says its national emphasis program on amputations is meant to find and reduce manufacturing dangers that can lead to them, per the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Injury Rates Draw Scrutiny Beyond Bastrop
Safety data compiled separately shows SpaceX’s injury rates running well above industry norms at some of its sites, though those figures describe Starbase rather than Bastrop. According to TechCrunch, Starbase’s Total Recordable Incident Rate hit 4.27 injuries per 100 workers in 2024, after peaking at 5.9 in 2023, compared with an aerospace manufacturing industry average of 1.6 that year. By comparison, TechCrunch reported 2024 rates of 1.12 at United Launch Alliance’s Decatur, Alabama plant and 1.09 at Blue Origin’s Florida rocket park.
The Texas Observer has reported that SpaceX logged 427 injuries and nine respiratory illnesses among its Starbase employees between January 2022 and June 2025. The outlet also noted that SpaceX’s Hawthorne, California plant has less than half the injury rate seen at Starbase. Bastrop’s own 2024 TRIR stood at 3.49 injuries per 100 workers, according to TechCrunch’s separate accounting of the company’s Texas sites.
