Cowboy Space Unveils Big Iron, a Rocket That Becomes an AI Data Center

The first stage will use nine Clydesdale engines burning liquid methane and oxygen, each producing about 1.33 MN of thrust. The second stage gets a single engine of the same family. The layout resembles Falcon 9, as does the plan to recover the first stage, which Cowboy Space says could land on an offshore platform. A combustion chamber test of the Clydesdale has already been carried out at NASA's Stennis Space Center.

The upper stage is the satellite

Once in orbit, the second stage will unfold solar panels and a radiator system, growing to roughly 132 by 73 metres. Inside will sit five racks of NVIDIA Vera Rubin chips, with around 1 MW of power for computing. The hull and shields are meant to double as radiators, ammonia will help carry away heat, and the nitrogen used to pressurise tanks will deploy the solar panels. Cooling remains a major challenge, since in a vacuum heat can only be shed by radiation.

Big Iron is meant mainly for the Stampede constellation of up to 20,000 data-center satellites in low Earth orbit. As each second stage becomes its own unit, that would require at least 20,000 launches, with several per day from sites called Trailheads. Launch locations and a detailed schedule have not been announced, and an application has been filed with the US Federal Communications Commission. A service called Big Iron Express would also launch third-party payloads.

What comes next

Cowboy Space, formerly Aetherflux, put its first satellite, Reason-1, into orbit in October to test beaming power to Earth by laser. Reason-2, planned for 2027, will carry GPUs for commercial and government customers. Founder Baiju Bhatt admits the December 2028 date for Big Iron is not guaranteed. Only real flights will show whether combining rocket and data center delivers the promised savings.