{"id":91404,"date":"2026-10-28T23:49:48","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T15:49:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/cowboy-space-built-a-rocket-because-it-couldnt-find-one\/"},"modified":"2026-10-28T23:49:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T15:49:48","slug":"cowboy-space-built-a-rocket-because-it-couldnt-find-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/cowboy-space-built-a-rocket-because-it-couldnt-find-one\/","title":{"rendered":"Cowboy Space Built a Rocket Because It Couldn\u2019t Find One"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Panelists
The \u201cOrbital Data Centers: Investable Infrastructure or Thermodynamic Bet?\u201d panel at Silicon Valley Space Week, Oct. 27, 2026. Photo: SatNews<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Cowboy Space unveiled its Big Iron rocket on Monday night. On Tuesday, its chief operating officer explained at Silicon Valley Space Week why an orbital data center company decided it had to build one.<\/p>\n

Joseph Yaffe, Cowboy\u2019s chief operating officer and chief legal officer, was picking up a point from fellow panelist Slava Turyshev of NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. \u201cSlava said something really, really critical,\u201d Yaffe said, agreeing that launch is \u201cprobably the single biggest bottleneck in this industry.\u201d If you\u2019re looking to ride along with others, he said, \u201cthat availability is dwindling, if not gone, in the very short term.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yaffe spoke on the Satellite Innovation panel \u201cOrbital Data Centers: Investable Infrastructure or Thermodynamic Bet?,\u201d moderated by Dara Panahy, a partner at Milbank. The panel also included Jason Aspiotis, CEO and co-founder of OwlO Cloud; Rob DeMillo, CEO and co-founder of Sophia Space; and Filip Rezabek, co-founder and CTO of SpaceComputer, an exhibitor at the event.<\/p>\n

The rocket is the data center<\/h2>\n

Big Iron\u2019s upper stage doesn\u2019t come back. It stays in orbit and becomes a megawatt-class data center. Payload reported that the 86-meter, stainless-steel vehicle is designed to put more than 15,000 kilograms into sun-synchronous orbit on nine methane-fueled Clydesdale engines, with a first flight targeted for 2028.<\/p>\n

On stage, Yaffe described the deployed upper stage with radiators about 60 meters across and solar arrays about 100 meters wide. \u201cIt\u2019s a big object, a very large object, and it requires medium lift launch capacity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The economics, he said, come down to two things: bringing launch in-house, and putting as much revenue-producing hardware into orbit per launch as possible. \u201cA megawatt of power per launch allows you to put effectively five NVL72 racks on board,\u201d Yaffe said, referring to Nvidia\u2019s rack-scale GPU systems.<\/p>\n

Cowboy also plans to open Big Iron to outside customers whose payloads need up to a megawatt, a service Payload reported it calls Big Iron Express.<\/p>\n

Other views on the panel<\/h2>\n

Not everyone on the panel was working to Cowboy\u2019s clock. The moderator summed up Turyshev\u2019s view as tangible results in about five years and a reliable commercial network in seven to 10.<\/p>\n

Financing is part of the challenge, too. Asked about the debt SpaceX has lined up to buy GPUs, Yaffe said \u201cit\u2019s a lot easier to finance things that don\u2019t burn up on re-entry,\u201d though he said Cowboy is exploring alternatives.<\/p>\n

Regulators are still asking questions. In an Aug. 28 deficiency letter on Cowboy\u2019s Stampede filing for up to 20,000 satellites, the FCC\u2019s Space Bureau asked the company for details including its satellites\u2019 dimensions, as SatNews reported in September.<\/p>\n

Yaffe framed the industry\u2019s question as no longer whether orbital data centers will happen, but what the best design is. Cowboy has now shown its answer. Its first satellite, Reason-1, launched Oct. 1 on SpaceX\u2019s Transporter-18, and Payload reported the company tested part of a Clydesdale engine at NASA\u2019s Stennis Space Center last week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Nick David, Editorial Lead, SatNews The \u201cOrbital Data Centers: Investable Infrastructure or Thermodynamic Bet?\u201d panel at Silicon Valley Space Week, Oct. 27, 2026. Photo: SatNews Cowboy Space unveiled its Big Iron rocket on Monday night. On Tuesday, its chief operating officer explained at Silicon Valley Space Week why an orbital data center company decided […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91404"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91404"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91404\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}