Cowboy Space Corporation, the former Aetherflux founded by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, on Monday unveiled "Big Iron," a rocket whose upper stage is designed to stay in orbit as a megawatt-class data center, rather than be discarded or release a separate satellite, according to the company.
Render of Big Iron in orbit. Image: Cowboy Space via PayloadThe rocket stands 86 meters (about 282 feet) tall, and its stainless-steel first stage is powered by nine liquid oxygen and methane "Clydesdale" engines rated at 300,000 pounds of thrust each, or 2.7 million pounds in total. The company says it can lift more than 15,000 kilograms to sun-synchronous orbit.
Once deployed in a dawn-dusk orbit, the upper stage becomes a satellite measuring 132 by 73 meters that can carry five racks of Nvidia Vera Rubin GPUs. The design is meant to do double duty: the rocket's skin serves as the radiator, its ammonia propellant doubles as coolant, and the nitrogen used to pressurize the stage also unfolds the solar wings.
"Our design puts us on a path to cost parity with terrestrial data centers," Bhatt said in the release. Chief operating officer Joseph Yaffe told Axios the company aims to build the first rocket by the end of 2027, with a first flight in 2028.
Nothing here has flown. Yaffe told Payload that <
