# Cowboy plans to make a rocket’s upper stage part of its data center

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/cowboy-plans-to-make-a-rockets-upper-stage-part-of-its-data/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Baiju Bhatt](https://realalpha.app/builders/baiju-bhatt/) · CEO, Cowboy Space Corporation · Founded Cowboy Space, building an integrated system for launch, solar power and AI compute in orbit.
- Host: [Akash Pasricha](https://realalpha.app/people/akash-pasricha/) · Host, The Information · Led The Information's Pro subscription and co-wrote its flagship newsletter, The Briefing.
- Show: The Information's TITV
- Episode: [TITV One Year Anniversary Show](https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/), Jul 15, 2026
- Moment: 1:10:30 to 1:16:00 of the episode (6 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/cowboy-plans-to-make-a-rockets-upper-stage-part-of-its-data/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/?t=4230

## Quote

> “So our approach is actually to use the mass and the volume of the upper stage of the rocket as a **functional part of the data center** itself.”
> — [Baiju Bhatt](https://realalpha.app/builders/baiju-bhatt/) at [1:11:42](https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/?t=4302) · The Information's TITV

## Takeaways

1. The upper stage stays in orbit instead of being discarded.
2. Its mass and volume help dissipate heat from the chips.
3. Cowboy is targeting 20,000 one-megawatt satellites.

## About this segment

Baiju Bhatt describes using the rocket’s upper stage as part of an orbital data center, including its cooling system. The design takes advantage of the mass and volume needed for tightly packed compute.

From “TITV One Year Anniversary Show”, Jul 15, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[1:10:43](https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/?t=4243) The way I understand it is, I mean, you basically, instead of losing the second stage and the upper, whatever, the payload stage, you're keeping it all in orbit. That's going to be the data center. Is that right? Correct. Yeah. How are you going to do that? Well, we're going to leave it up there. That's not been done before, dude. I mean, that's kind of the hardest part, right? Well, there are actually, I think there are some examples from the 60s of using the second stage as the satellite in orbit.

[1:11:16](https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/?t=4276) I mean, a lot of things have been tried in the 1960s. Yeah. But the general approach is, so you have two-stage rocket, second stage gets you to kind of your orbit, and then the traditional approach is that you dispense your payload and then you re-enter the upper stage and it burns up on re-entry and parts of it will sort of end up in specific spots where they're landing. In the case of data centers in space, the actual use case for the satellite is different.

[1:11:45](https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/?t=4305) And in particular, a big chunk of what data center satellites in space do is they dissipate heat out that the chipsets are generating from the power that they're generating from the sun. So our approach is actually to use the mass and the volume of the upper stage of the rocket as a functional part of the data center itself. So using the actual vehicle itself as a part of the cooling mechanism is the novel thing that we're doing.

[1:12:10](https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/?t=4330) And it's kind of interesting because it takes the really difficult part of re-entering the upper stage of a rocket for reuse in the case of things like Starship or the Space Shuttle program. And it says that there's a different answer, right? So you can either go with a disposable upper stage or attempt at a reusable upper stage. Or the third one is there's a usable upper stage, which is what we're kind of pioneering.

[1:12:36](https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/?t=4356) Why hasn't this been tried before? I mean, you know, I know you've prided yourself on doing a lot of user research, qualitative research. This is something you and I talked about the first time that you came on the show. I mean, I'm sure you've talked to many entrepreneurs who have tried space innovation. I mean, surely somebody must have tried this before, right? I mean, why hasn't this become a thing?

[1:12:59](https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/?t=4379) It's the use case that data centers in space in particular generate because even if you contrast it with something like a low-Earth orbit communications constellation where, you know, you have a certain amount of mass and volume you can take to orbit, and then if you want to provide a service on the ground, you kind of want to take that mass and volume and spread it out over as many spacecraft as you can because they're moving so fast.

[1:13:23](https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/?t=4403) The thing about data centers and space is the actual application for the technology is pretty unique in that you ideally want to have your chipsets, meaning neighboring GPUs as physically close together as possible, which leads you to a monolithic architecture. And also the power requirements are gargantuan. This is the reason why this whole approach is being sort of explored, which kind of leads you to saying, hey, let's maximize the power that each entire rocket launch can generate.

[1:13:55](https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/?t=4435) Right. So the point I'm trying to make is that while it is a novel approach to doing the data centers in space as one big upper stage as the data center, the reason is actually the way the technology works and what the technology is trying to do, if that makes sense. You're still targeting the end of 2028 to have your first rocket launch? Yes, we are. And that's still the timeline? We're still working towards that, yeah.

[1:14:21](https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/?t=4461) Okay. And, I mean, there's a couple other logistical questions, and we'll get to sort of your perspective on space, generally speaking. How long will these orbital data centers end up being in space for them? And what's the lifespan? Lifespan, yeah. So right now we're targeting about a six-year useful life, and we'll iterate on that as time goes on. If we can get more useful life out of the vehicle beyond the six years, then obviously that's beneficial.

[1:14:51](https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/?t=4491) But it's kind of baselined against the usefulness of the chipsets and how long we think each one of the components is going to survive. And how many will you want? What's the ambition in terms of how many you have up there? Yeah, our application with the FCC is for 20,000 of these things. So each one, we're baselining at about a megawatt of power. So the target is about a 20 gigawatt constellation in orbit.

[1:15:14](https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/?t=4514) And if you just kind of think about our company doing this in the context of where the space industry is today, and this is kind of the really exciting part about all the data center and space stuff, is that this represents a really dramatically larger commercial use case for outer space. Because up until now, it's been primarily government applications, as well as Earth imaging and communications, data centers in space.

[1:15:42](https://realalpha.app/v/veG9nEN_kTQ/?t=4542) The mass and volume that it's going to demand is very substantial compared to those applications. Right. What do you think of Blue Origin's approach?