Steve Wozniak Created Privateer Space Company
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak announced the creation of private space company Privateer Space. He tweeted about it today
According to the company’s YouTube account, Privateer Space is co-founded with Alex Fielding, CEO of robotics company Ripcord. The founders are committed to “making space safe and accessible for all mankind.”
The company’s plans are expected to be announced at the AMOS technology conference in September.
The first launch of Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket, by Ukrainian entrepreneur Max Polyakov, was both successful and unsuccessful. The launch on September 3 from Vandenberg base of the US Space Forces in California started successfully, but after 2.5 minutes the rocket blew up. According to some reports, it was detonated intentionally when a certain anomaly was detected.
The company’s plans were announced earlier. In the future, Firefly Aerospace intends to commercially launch cargoes weighing up to a ton and 630 kg, respectively, into orbits at an altitude of 300 km and 500 km. Ukrainian entrepreneur Maxim Polyakov bought Firefly Aerospace (formerly Firefly Space Systems) in 2017.
This is a private aerospace company headquartered in Austin, Texas, USA, specializing in launching cargoes into space with light rockets.
The Ukrainian, who hails from Zaporozhye and has dreamed of conquering space since childhood, has invested about $150 million in the company, Bloomberg reporters estimated in the fall of 2020.
The same article has an interesting observation: at that time, there were only three people in the world who invested even more of their own money in a private rocket company — Elon Musk with SpaceX, Jeff Bezos with Blue Origin and Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic.
The Virgin Galactic spacecraft with 71-year-old billionaire Richard Branson aboard returned to Earth on Sunday, July 11, after launching from a spaceport in New Mexico.
The launch vehicle took off horizontally and climbed to an altitude of 15 kilometers. The Unity rocket then separated from the mother ship to climb to an altitude of 80 kilometers, where the conditional boundary of Earth orbit and space.
The craft was flown by two professional pilots and had four passengers on board, including Branson himself.
After disengaging the rocket engine, they were able to unbuckle their seat belts and experience weightlessness. Shortly thereafter, the rocketplane began its return to Earth. The flight lasted about two hours.