<\/p>\n Local officials have not identified the deceased or provided details about the death. However, The Wall Street Journal<\/a> talked to sources who said the person was employed by a contractor and died after a fall.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Starbase is the manufacturing, testing and launch hub for Starship<\/a>, the fully reusable rocket that SpaceX<\/a> is developing to help humanity settle the moon and Mars<\/a>, among other tasks. The vehicle, which stands more than 400 feet (122 meters) tall, is the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built.<\/p>\n Starbase is also one of the nation’s newest cities; it became incorporated in May 2025<\/a>, by a vote of 212 to 6.<\/p>\n Starbase has been quite busy lately, for SpaceX has been gearing up for a very important launch \u2014 the debut of Starship V3<\/a> (Version 3), an advanced, more powerful iteration of the rocket that’s capable of reuse and deep-space flight. V3’s maiden test flight will be the 12th overall for Starship, which began flying in fully stacked form in April 2023.<\/p>\n Starship V3 was originally supposed to launch from Starbase today (May 19), but SpaceX pushed the suborbital flight back twice in the past few days, most recently to Thursday evening<\/a> (May 21). The company has not given a reason for the delays, nor has it publicly commented on the Friday death at Starbase.<\/p>\n Starbase has a higher worker-injury rate than any other SpaceX manufacturing or test site, according to TechCrunch<\/a>, which performed an analysis in 2025 using OSHA data. And that rate is higher than the industry average, the outlet reported.<\/p>\n Starbase “logged injury rates that were almost 6x higher than the average for comparable space vehicle-manufacturing outfits and nearly 3x higher than aerospace manufacturing as a whole in 2024,” TechCrunch wrote. “That outsized injury rate has persisted since 2019, when SpaceX began sharing Starbase injury data with the federal regulator [OSHA].”<\/p>\n SpaceX is currently dealing with a worker-safety lawsuit \u2014 one filed by a truck driver, who says he was injured by liquid methane<\/a> while delivering the rocket propellant to the company’s McGregor test site, near Waco, in June 2024.<\/p>\n![\"Space\"](\"https:\/\/www.space.com\/media\/img\/spc-logo-w.svg\"){kind=logo}
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