Key Highlights:
- Wozniak published a promotional film for a private space firm named Privateer Space in a tweet.
- The Privateer website states that additional information about the firm will be revealed during the AMOS Tech 2021 conference
- Privateer appears to be a “new satellite firm focusing on monitoring and cleaning up things in space.
A Mysterious Announcement
Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple, tweeted a mysterious announcement: “A Private space company is starting up, unlike the others.” Privateer’s linked video commercial mirrors most other billionaires’ space announcements, with clichés like “together, we’ll go far” over what looks to be stock footage of space achievements. Cut to footage from a climate march and the phrase, “this isn’t a race”—an apparent allusion to the classic “space race” of the Cold War era, and maybe a dig to Blue Origins starting a Twitter battle with Richard Branson about who gets to call oneself a true astronaut.
Woz didn’t reveal anything more besides the movie, which mingles a wildfire, clouds of smoke pouring from fossil fuel power plants, people reaching for the heavens, a youngster in an astronaut outfit, and a close-up of an iris. “Here’s to taking care of what we have so that the next generation may be better together,” adds the narrator.
Additional Information to be revealed soon
The Privateer website is now in secret mode, but it states that additional information about the firm will be revealed during the AMOS Tech 2021 conference, which kicks off on Sept 14 in Maui, Hawaii, and goes until the end of the week.
Woz co-founded Privateer with Alex Fielding, a member of the original iMac team, according to the YouTube movie description. The two co-founded Wheels of Zeus (“WoZ”), a now-defunct start-up that produced GPS tracking tags that could be attached to often misplaced goods.
As of publishing, there is no contact information on the Privateer website, and the contact form is not processing inquiries.
Cleaning up Space
Privateer appears to be a “new satellite firm focusing on monitoring and cleaning up things in space,” according to an August press release for an unrelated 3D titanium alloy printer.
Space has become a dumping site for defunct satellites and launch vehicle rockets, with NASA referring to low Earth orbit as the “World’s greatest rubbish dump” in 2019, with almost 6,000 tonnes of debris. NASA has warned that space trash poses a hazard to astronauts, with debris travelling at speeds up to seven times that of a bullet, and that paint particles have broken shuttle windows. Currently, the CIA is keeping an eye on 27,000 bigger bits of space debris.
Cleanup will require money that the US government does not have. Former NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine asked Congress last year to support a $15 million cleaning mission, tweeting: “In the last two weeks, there have been three high concern potential conjunctions.” The most current space spending measure, which passed the Senate, does not include such money, but instead asks the Office of Science and Technology Policy to assess the issue.
