SpaceX Senior Executive Tom Ochinero Resigns: Report

Quincy Jon, Tech Times 21 February 2024, 11:02 am

In a surprising development at SpaceX, Tom Ochinero, the Senior Vice President of Commercial Business, resigned on Monday, marking an unusually high-level departure from Elon Musk's space company.

Sources, opting for anonymity, disclosed that Ochinero, a veteran with over a decade at SpaceX, is leaving to attend to a family medical matter, according to a CNBC report.

A Significant Figure in SpaceX

Ochinero's journey with SpaceX began as an engineer contributing to the design of nosecones for the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets. In 2019, he assumed the role of spearheading the sales of SpaceX rockets and astronaut flights.

His tenure witnessed substantial growth as the company expanded its market share in launching commercial satellites and secured multiple deals for privately crewed spaceflights.

Acknowledged as "personally responsible for over a billion dollars of annual revenue" at SpaceX, Ochinero reported to Gwynne Shotwell, the company's president and COO. With his departure, the baton is expected to pass to Stephanie Bednarek, presently SpaceX's Senior Director of Commercial Launch Sales.

This significant transition in SpaceX's leadership occurs concurrently with the upcoming third test flight of the Starship rocket.

(Photo: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Getty Images) A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon spacecraft sits on Launch Complex 39A after its launch was scrubbed at the Kennedy Space Center on August 25, 2023, in Cape Canaveral, Florida.

SpaceX Fined Due to Workplace Hazards

In related news, the Texas Secretary of State has released paperwork confirming that SpaceX has begun shifting its company registration from Delaware to Texas. This follows the Delaware Chancery Court's order to cancel Elon Musk's $56 billion 2018 options-based compensation package at Tesla.

Elon Musk, confirmed SpaceX's shift from Delaware to Texas on X (formerly Twitter), and urged other companies still incorporated in Delaware to expedite their relocation procedures.

Meanwhile, SpaceX faces scrutiny over workplace safety practices as Washington state inspectors conclude investigations into an incident at the Redmond, Washington, plant where an employee's foot was nearly amputated. The company is now saddled with a $3,600 fine for safety violations, as per a previous TechTimes report.

According to state inspection records obtained through open records requests, during a visit in December that was the result of worker complaints, inspectors found safety violations.

The facility lacked a comprehensive safety program, proper communication of work regulations, and a mechanism to address violations, according to the inspectors. Described as a "near amputation," the incident involved a worker's foot being crushed by a falling roll of material.

SpaceX, while asserting the issue was an isolated incident and had been resolved, has the option to appeal the ruling. Inspectors revealed that despite an increase in material weight fed into machines, the company did not mandate steel-toe shoes for its employees. The severity of the violation is underscored, considering the potential harm.

Documents from the investigation highlight a worker's claim that safety was compromised for the sake of production quotas. Allegedly, the roll-loading machine had been intentionally misconfigured to boost output during the material-loading stage.