\u201cWhat we want to do is put a lot of available power in orbit, in our case to power chips, to power AI data centers,\u201d Cowboy Space COO and Chief Legal Officer Joseph Yaffe told Payload. \u201cThe most efficient and most effective way to do that is to build our own vehicle to get us into space.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cowboy is also opening Big Iron to outside customers\u2014who can fly payloads that need up to a megawatt of power\u2014through a program dubbed Big Iron Express. \u201cLaunch capacity is at a premium right now, if available at all,\u201d Yaffe said.<\/p>\n
But many of the alternatives<\/a>\u2014Big Iron included\u2014have yet to fly, and government customers \u201cwant to see a completed rocket,\u201d Yaffe said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Horsepower check: Big Iron is no lightweight. To move fast and keep costs down, the team turned to proven architectures, and designed for existing infrastructure.\u00a0<\/p>\n The 86 m stainless-steel vehicle is sized to be transportable by road.\u00a0Each vehicle is designed to carry 15,000+ kg to sun-synchronous orbit.\u00a0Nine liquid-oxygen and methane \u201cClydesdale\u201d engines will power the first stage\u2014each providing 300,000 lbs of thrust.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cowboy tested part of the Clydesdale at NASA\u2019s Stennis Space Center last week. A ~30-person team built and tested its combustion chamber in 90 days, and the company is \u201calmost a year ahead of schedule,\u201d Yaffe said.<\/p>\n Rather than being discarded, the upper stage joins Cowboy\u2019s constellation. Once deployed in dawn-dusk orbit, each sat will measure 132 m by 73 m and carry five racks of NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPUs.<\/p>\n Two-trick pony: To make every kilogram sent to orbit count, many of Big Iron\u2019s parts take on a second job once they\u2019re in orbit.<\/p>\n The rocket\u2019s skin becomes the data center\u2019s radiator;Ammonia propellant works a double shift as coolant;Nitrogen that pressurizes the second stage also deploys the solar wings.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIf you build a small satellite with GPUs on it, you\u2019re going to have to put radiators on it,\u201d Yaffe said. \u201cAnd so you\u2019re paying for that same metal twice to lift it into space.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Hold your horses: Cowboy got its first taste of orbit with Reason-1<\/a>, a laser power beaming demo sat that launched Oct. 1 aboard SpaceX\u2019s Transporter-18. Yaffe said the first beaming attempt will likely happen in the next few weeks, and testing so far has turned up \u201czero red flags.\u201d<\/p>\n Reason-2\u2014slated for launch in 2027\u2014will run GPUs in orbit for commercial and government customers, including a NOAA effort to process weather data in space.<\/p>\n Cowboy is targeting Big Iron\u2019s first flight in 2028. From there, it\u2019s off to the races to scale Stampede, its planned constellation of up to 20,000 sats, pending FCC approval.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just still have a lot of executing to do,\u201d Yaffe said.<\/p>\n Related Stories<\/p>\n In the contest to build up commercial launch capabilities in Canada, Quebec-based startup Reaction Dynamics has entered a new weight class.<\/p>\n The heavy-lift rocket startup debuted on Y Combinator as part of the Fall 2026 batch.<\/p>\n Reflect Orbital announced the purchase of two launches today from Indian launcher Skyroot Aerospace.<\/p>\n![\"Reaction](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Hero-mountain-range-pad-304x170.png\")
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Colare cofounders Esther Thomas and Nain Abdi. Image: Colare<\/p>\n