Cowboy Space Corporation unveils Big Iron, a rocket that becomes an orbital data center

The former Aetherflux, founded by Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt, wants its rocket's upper stage to stay in orbit as a megawatt-class compute node Most rockets treat their upper stage like a disposable coffee cup. It does its job, then it gets thrown away. Cowboy Space Corporation wants to keep the cup and turn it into a server farm. On Monday, the company unveiled Big Iron, a rocket whose upper stage is designed to remain in orbit and operate as a megawatt-class data center, according to the company. The pitch is simple to say and very hard to build. Instead of launching a rocket that drops off a separate satellite, Cowboy Space says the final stage of the rocket is the satellite. What Big Iron is supposed to do Cowboy Space is the company formerly known as Aetherflux. It was founded by Baiju Bhatt, who co-founded the trading app Robinhood before turning his attention skyward. The company says Big Iron can lift more than 15,000 kilograms to sun-synchronous orbit. That is an orbit that keeps a spacecraft passing over the same parts of Earth at the same local time each day, which tends to mean steady sunlight. For a data center that runs on solar power, steady sunlight is the whol...