Steve Wozniak announces Privateer, a new space company

Stand aside, space barons. Steve Wozniak announced space plans.

Sunday evening, Wozniak tweeted an enigmatic announcement: “A private space company is starting up, unlike the others. The embedded video ad for the company, Privateer, deceptively resembles the space ads of most other billionaires with platitudes like “Together we will go far,” on what appears to be archive footage of space milestones . Clipping of footage of a climate march and the statement ‘this is not a race’ – an obvious reference to the original ‘space race’ of the Cold War era, and possibly be a nod to stuff like Blue Origins choose a fight on Twitter with Richard Branson to find out who calls himself a real astronaut.

Woz has not shared any further details beyond the video (watch it below), which somewhat confusingly mixes up a wildfire, clouds of smoke billowing from power plants at fossil fuels, people reaching for the sky, a child in an astronaut costume and a close-up of an iris. “Here’s taking care of what we have so the next generation can be better together,” the voiceover said.

The Corsair website is in stealth mode, but says more details about the company will be announced at the AMOS Tech 2021 conference, which begins Tuesday in Maui, Hawaii, and runs through the end of the week.

According to Description of the YouTube video, Woz co-founded Privateer with Alex Fielding, a member of the first iMac team. The two co-founders of Wheels of Zeus (“WoZ”), a now-closed start-up that created GPS tracking beacons that can be attached to commonly lost items.

Privateer’s website does not contain any contact information and the contact form does not process inquiries as of the date of publication. We have reached out to Wozniak for comment and will update when we have a response.

If your gut reaction is why, pink ??!?!?, it appears he’s not campaigning for space domination alongside Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Jeff Bezos. Rather, it looks like he’s planning to take out space junk; an august Press release for an independent titanium alloy 3D printer, described Privateer as a “new satellite company focused on monitoring and cleaning up objects in space.”

Woz would do these guys a favor. Space has become a dumping ground for dead satellites and launcher rockets, so much so that in 2019, NASA called low earth orbit “the world’s largest garbage dump”, with nearly 6,000 tonnes of garbage. NASA has warned that space trash threatens visitors to space with trash hurtling down to seven times faster than a bullet and reports that even the paint stains smashed the windows of the shuttle. The agency is currently monitoring 27,000 pieces of larger space junk.

The cleanup will cost money that the US government is not allocating. Last year, former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine urged Congress to fund a $ 15 million cleanup mission, Tweeter: “In the last 2 weeks, there have been 3 very worrying potential conjunctions. Debris is getting worse! The most recent space finance bill, which was passed by the Senate, did not set aside these funds but directs the Office of Science and Technology Policy to assess the situation. (The conversation around this bill has mostly focused on Blue Origin’s campaign to write a $ 10 billion check for government contracts to compete with SpaceX.)

Surprising delicacies fill the space waste management space. Lasers! Space claws! Tentacles! The space company Astroscale, funded by the British and Japanese governments has already started test magnetic docking systems that tow future space debris and use the Earth’s atmosphere as an incinerator. (Although customers will need to integrate the corresponding docking plates before launching ships.)

Former NASA scientist Donald Kessler predicted in 1978 that the densified minefield would become increasingly dangerous for decades to come, as future collisions erupted in more garbage. Last year he Recount Scientific American that space is “long overdue” for a disaster.