Cowboy Space Reveals Big Iron Data Center Rocket
Cowboy Space, building a power grid in outer space for artificial intelligence, led by Baiju Bhatt, has revealed the Big Iron Data Center Rocket.
Cowboy Space has unveiled Big Iron, a launch vehicle whose upper stage is designed to remain in orbit and operate as a megawatt-class data center. The announcement was made on Monday evening.
“What we want to do is put a lot of available power in orbit, in our case to power chips, to power AI data centers,” Cowboy Space COO and Chief Legal Officer Joseph Yaffe told Payload. “The most efficient and most effective way to do that is to build our own vehicle to get us into space.”
Cowboy Space is also opening Big Iron to external customers through Big Iron Express, a program for payloads requiring up to one megawatt of power. CEO Yaffe noted that launch capacity is currently scarce, though government customers remain cautious about vehicles that have yet to complete a flight.
Big Iron's Technical Specifications.
To accelerate development and control costs, Cowboy Space has adopted proven engineering architectures and designed the vehicle to work with existing infrastructure.
Vehicle size: The 86-metre stainless-steel rocket is designed for road transport.
Payload capacity: More than 15,000 kg to sun-synchronous orbit.
First-stage propulsion: Nine liquid-oxygen and methane-powered Clydesdale engines, each delivering 300,000 pounds of thrust.
Cowboy Space tested part of its Clydesdale engine at NASA’s Stennis Space Center last week. A team of approximately 30 people built and tested the combustion chamber in 90 days, putting the company “almost a year ahead of schedule,” according to Yaffe.
Rather than being discarded after launch, Big Iron’s upper stage will become part of Cowboy’s orbital data-center constellation. Each satellite, deployed in dawn-dusk orbit, will measure 132 metres by 73 metres and house five racks of NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPUs.
Big Iron's Dual-Purpose Design.
To maximize the value of every kilogram launched into orbit, Big Iron’s components are designed to serve additional functions once in space:
Rocket skin: Doubles as the data center’s radiator.
Ammonia propellant: Also serves as coolant.
Nitrogen: Used to pressurize the second stage and deploy the solar wings.
“If you build a small satellite with GPUs on it, you’re going to have to put radiators on it,” Yaffe said. “And so you’re paying for that same metal twice to lift it into space.”
Cowboy Space's Launch Roadmap.
Cowboy Space began testing its orbital data-center technology with Reason-1, a laser power-beaming demonstration satellite launched on October 1 aboard SpaceX’s Transporter-18 mission. According to Yaffe, the first power-beaming attempt is expected within the next few weeks, with testing so far revealing “zero red flags.”
Reason-2, scheduled for launch in 2027, will run GPUs in orbit for commercial and government customers. Planned applications include a NOAA initiative to process weather data in space.
Cowboy Space is targeting 2028 for Big Iron’s first flight. The longer-term goal is to scale Stampede, a planned satellite constellation of up to 20,000 spacecraft, subject to FCC approval.
