Cowboy Space Unveils Orbital Data Center Rocket
The 282-foot rocket design aims to house five GPU compute racks in orbit starting in 2028.
Updated on Oct. 27, 2026 in Data Centers
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Cowboy Space Corporation has unveiled the design for Big Iron, a 282-foot rocket intended to operate as an orbital data center. The vehicle is currently in the research-and-design stage, with plans to house five compute racks of NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPUs in its upper stage.
Why it matters
The company aims to address a specific shortage of available space-based launch platforms. By placing compute infrastructure directly into orbit, the project attempts to bypass current limitations on terrestrial data center growth.
The 282-foot rocket is powered by nine liquid oxygen and methane Clydesdale engines, each producing 30,000 pounds of thrust. Its upper stage features five compute racks of NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPUs supported by deployable radiators.
The players
Cowboy Space Corporation
A developer of aerospace launch platforms focused on orbital computing infrastructure.
NVIDIA
A designer of graphics processing units and data center hardware powering high-performance compute applications.
The details
The Big Iron rocket uses a reusable booster design intended to reduce the cost of reaching orbit. Once in space, the upper stage remains in position as a permanent data center, utilizing deployable radiators—mechanical heat-exchange panels—to manage the intense thermal load generated by the high-performance GPU arrays.
Timeline
Cowboy Space Corporation plans to build the first rocket by the end of 2027.
The company targets the first flight of the Big Iron rocket in 2028.
The Tech Race
Cowboy Space Corporation enters the heavy-lift launch market as industry incumbents like SpaceX move toward retiring legacy systems. The project signals a shift toward specialized, mission-specific launch platforms rather than generalized cargo delivery.
This development currently exists only as a design, with no functional hardware available for commercial use. If realized, the platform would serve organizations requiring high-performance compute resources stationed in orbit rather than on terrestrial servers.
The takeaway
Cowboy Space Corporation is attempting to marry orbital launch capabilities with high-performance GPU computing. Readers should monitor the scheduled first flight in 2028 to determine if the rocket achieves its target orbital capacity.
Further reading
Explore more developments in high-density computing infrastructure on our Data Centers page.
Source note: This article includes information reported by Axios.
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