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a16zPrivateer’s Steve Wozniak, Alex Fielding, and Dr. Moriba Jah on the Data Highway Above
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At a glance
WHAT IT’S REALLY ABOUT
Privateer's Founders Warn of Space Debris and Push Open Data
- Steve Wozniak explains he joined Privateer through his friend Alex Fielding, framing space cleanup like tidying a messy house and stressing transparency, with reflections on inventors versus engineers and iterating toward the future.
- Moriba Jah and Alex Fielding describe low Earth orbit as a finite resource crowded with a small fraction of working satellites, tens of thousands of trackable objects, and over a million pieces too small to see.
- The guests argue that governance is weak: the Space Act and treaties lack enforcement and right-of-way rules, over 40% of registered objects are reportedly out of compliance, and responsibility falls on governments rather than companies.
- Privateer's approach is to give away tools like Wayfinder and conjunction software, build a shared data source based on mutual contribution, and support a circular economy for space spanning prevention, reuse, removal, and avoiding abandonment.
- Fielding closes by arguing that empathy, accessibility, and stewardship, tied to the Hawaiian concepts of pono and kuleana, are the keys to success, and that the timing is urgent as commercial launches now dominate.
IDEAS WORTH REMEMBERING
5 ideasOrbital space where satellites operate is finite, even if outer space is not.
Jah says satellites sit on specific orbital highways close to Earth, and Fielding estimates only about 110 million 10-kilometer bubbles fit between 250 and 1,000 kilometers, roughly one year of auto industry production.
Most debris is untracked and still dangerous.
Fielding says there are over a million pieces smaller than a centimeter, while ground radar mainly sees objects larger than a softball, which travel around 18,000 miles an hour.
Space rules exist but lack enforcement and basic traffic norms.
Fielding notes there is no defined right of way and cites a finding that over 40% of registered objects are out of compliance, while Jah says legal responsibility rests with governments, so transparency may be the main deterrent.
Privateer aims to give away safety data rather than charge for it.
Fielding criticizes past pay-to-avoid-collision services as extortion-like and says Privateer will offer tools free, with contribution of state vectors and telemetry resulting in shared capability.
Intent in space cannot be measured directly and must not be assumed hostile.
Jah says there is no intent-o-meter, and that assuming malice from capability alone, like a grappling arm, risks escalation, so social science and cultural context should inform the data.
WORDS WORTH SAVING
5 quotesSo I'm closer to low Earth orbit than I am to you, and I think that's what people just don't realize.
— Dr. Moriba Jah
You know that the orbital carrying capacity is past its limit when our decisions and actions can no longer prevent bad things from happening.
— Dr. Moriba Jah
You wouldn't get on a passenger jet if you got told when you boarded the plane, "There's a million little bullets flying around, and this is going to make your life potentially very miserable.
— Alex Fielding
I believe that if you did that damage one step at a time, you can undo the damage one step at a time.
— Alex Fielding
It's like you say, "When is your birthday?" "Oh, it was, uh, two days ago. August 23." No, the birthday should be when the Earth is around the sun at the same place.
— Steve Wozniak
High quality AI-generated summary created from speaker-labeled transcript.
