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Cowboy Space unveils Big Iron rocket for 20,000-orbit AI data centers
Space.com reports Cowboy Space, run by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, unveiled a stainless-steel Big Iron rocket whose upper stage would become an orbital AI data-center satellite, with a first flight targeted for December 2028.
Cowboy Space unveiled a stainless-steel rocket called Big Iron on Monday night in Palo Alto, California, saying it would use the vehicle to loft orbital artificial-intelligence data centers, Space.com reported, citing an event the company called Big Sky Rising1.
The California company, run by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, says it intends to operate about 20,000 AI data-center satellites in low Earth orbit, a constellation it calls Stampede, and to build those spacecraft in house1. Space.com said Cowboy Space was founded in 2024 as the power-beaming company Aetherflux1.
Bhatt described a two-stage vehicle whose upper stage would become the satellite after reaching orbit1. "It's a fundamentally novel approach to rocketry in the modern era, in our opinion," he said at the event, according to Space.com1.
Space.com said Big Iron would stand 282 feet (86 meters) tall and 15.4 feet (4.7 meters) wide1. Nine Clydesdale engines would power the first stage and one the upper stage, burning liquid oxygen and liquid methane, a layout Space.com compared with SpaceX's Falcon 91. An animation shown at the event depicted the first stage landing on a ship at sea1.
The company uses the name Big Iron for both the rocket and the data-center satellite1. Space.com said the spacecraft would weigh about 33,000 pounds (15,000 kilograms) on Earth and stretch about 433 feet (132 meters) after unfurling solar panels1. The payload fairing would become a radiator for heat from onboard GPUs; Bhatt said each satellite would carry five racks providing about 1 megawatt of compute payload1.
Bhatt compared that scale with SpaceX's planned Starmind spacecraft, which he called an "imperial-class satellite," with a solar wingspan of 246 feet (75 meters) and about 250 kilowatts of compute, Space.com reported1.
Each Big Iron rocket would carry one satellite, so filling Stampede would require 20,000 launches, plus thousands more each year to keep that number, according to the account1. Cowboy Space said it intends to launch multiple times per day from complexes it calls Trailheads, each likely with four active mounts; launch sites have not been announced1. Bhatt also said Big Iron would fly customer payloads under a service called Big Iron Express1.
The company is still building and testing the Clydesdale engine and aims to fly Big Iron for the first time in December 20281. Bhatt said a lot of things would have to go right and called the target ambitious, Space.com reported1. Cowboy Space currently operates Reason-1, a satellite launched Oct. 1 on SpaceX's Transporter-18 rideshare to test laser power beaming from low Earth orbit to the ground, according to that report1.
