Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak becomes the new member of billionaires in the private sector of the space race. He announced via Twitter a space startup company called Privateer that he said will be unlike most existing private space companies.
According to Daily Mail, Wozniak shared a video with the news that shows people working together and showing that the space company would be eco-friendly along with the clichéd tagline of "the sky is no longer the limit" at the end of the video.
He has revealed further details about Privateer but will do so at the Advanced Maui Optical and Space Surveillance Technologies (AMOS) Conference this September 14-17.
Steve Wozniak Space Startup Company
As a computer scientist, Wozniak is well known as the inventor of the Apple II computer. Together with Steve Jobs, they founded Apple Computer on April 1, 1976, now run by CEO Tim Cook.
In his new startup company, he is working with former Apple engineer and Ripcord founder Alex Fielding to establish Privateer. The two have worked together before on numerous occasions, particularly on co-founding Wheels of Zeus back in 2002. It was a company that created GPS location tags attached to objects.
Wozniak now becomes the latest and most unlikely billionaire to join private space company business after Elon Musk's SpaceX, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, and Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic.
Although Privateer already has a website, it only includes a broken contact form. For now, the startup company has yet to reveal further details, but it is said to work to keep outer space safe and accessible to all humans.
Read also: First Movie in Space: Russia Racing to Beat Tom Cruise and NASA Movie As It Starts to Cast Stars
Privateer Space Wants to Clean Space Junk
Gizmodo reported that Wozniak's company would be doing the space industry a favor as it plans to clean the garbage left in space. Over the years, space junk has accumulated in low Earth orbit that is now becoming a problem. Dead satellites and launch vehicle rockets were dumped in low Earth orbit that NASA has started calling the "world's largest garbage dump" with almost 6,000 tons of waste.
The American space agency has warned that space junk moving seven times faster than a bullet could hit space goers after reports of paint fleck smashed into shuttle windows. Currently, there are 27,000 pieces of larger space junk that NASA is monitoring.
Space cleanup would likely cost a lot of money in which former NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine urged Congress to fund a $15 million cleanup mission. As of now, a space funding bill passed the Senate but has not set aside a budget for a cleanup. Instead, they are directing the Office of Science and Technology Policy to evaluate the situation.
On the other hand, NASA is not the only concerned about space junk. Other countries, such as the UK and Japan, are also planning a government-funded way of space cleanup. These efforts include using lasers, space claws, and tentacles that will collect or eliminate space debris.
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