Cowboy Space unveils Big Iron rocket with upper stage that stays in orbit as data centre

Cowboy Space revealed Big Iron on 26 October, a launch vehicle whose upper stage is designed to remain in orbit as a megawatt-class data centre. The company is also offering the vehicle to outside customers through a programme called Big Iron Express, for payloads that need up to a megawatt of power.

The 86 m stainless-steel vehicle is sized to be transportable by road and is designed to carry more than 15,000 kg to sun-synchronous orbit. Nine liquid-oxygen and methane Clydesdale engines will power the first stage, each providing 300,000 lbs of thrust. Cowboy tested part of the Clydesdale at NASA's Stennis Space Centre last week, with a team of about 30 building and testing its combustion chamber in 90 days.

Rather than being discarded, the upper stage joins Cowboy's constellation. Once deployed in dawn-dusk orbit, each satellite will measure 132 m by 73 m and carry five racks of NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPUs. Cowboy is targeting Big Iron's first flight in 2028, then scaling Stampede, a planned constellation of up to 20,000 satellites, pending FCC approval.

Cowboy's first satellite, Reason-1, a laser power beaming demonstrator, launched on 1 October aboard SpaceX's Transporter-18. The first beaming attempt will likely happen in the next few weeks. Reason-2, slated for 2027, will run GPUs in orbit for commercial and government customers, including a NOAA effort to process weather data in space.

Sourcepayloadspace.com