Cowboy Space unveils Big Iron for a network of 20,000 AI data centers — Space.com

In Palo Alto, United States, Cowboy Space unveiled the Big Iron rocket, which it plans to use to deploy a constellation of 20,000 orbital data centers for artificial intelligence systems. The company plans to conduct the rocket’s first launch in December 2028, Space.com reports.

The California-based company is led by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt. According to him, the project’s distinctive feature is that the upper stage of the two-stage rocket will transform into a data center satellite after reaching orbit. Cowboy Space calls both the rocket and such a satellite Big Iron, viewing them as parts of a single system.

Big Iron specifications

The stainless-steel rocket will be 86 meters tall and 4.7 meters in diameter. It is planned to be equipped with Cowboy Space’s in-house Clydesdale engines: nine on the first stage and one on the upper stage. The engines will run on liquid oxygen and liquid methane.

The first stage of Big Iron is planned to be reusable. During the presentation, the company showed an animation in which the booster returns to land on a ship at sea. The upper stage is to remain in low Earth orbit as a satellite with a mass of about 15,000 kilograms. After deploying its solar panels, it will be approximately 132 meters long.

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The Stampede constellation

According to the company’s plan, each Big Iron satellite will have five GPU racks and provide about 1 megawatt of computing load. The payload fairing, which will protect the spacecraft during launch, is to transform into a radiator for heat removal after being placed into orbit.

Cowboy Space has named its future constellation Stampede. Since one rocket will launch one satellite, 20,000 launches will be needed to create the network. The company also plans to launch payloads for other customers as part of the Big Iron Express service.

Cowboy Space is currently building and testing the Clydesdale engine and also operates the Reason-1 satellite. It was launched on October 1 as part of the SpaceX Transporter-18 mission to test the transmission of energy by a high-power laser from low Earth orbit to a ground receiver.