# Each Big Iron is designed to carry five GPU racks

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/each-big-iron-is-designed-to-carry-five-gpu-racks/ 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/) · Baiju Bhatt is founder of Cowboy Space. · Founded Cowboy Space, building an integrated system for launch, solar power and AI compute in orbit.
- Host: [Shawn Ryan](https://realalpha.app/people/shawn-ryan/) · Host, The Shawn Ryan Show
- Show: The Shawn Ryan Show
- Episode: [The Space Technology That Could Change History Forever](https://realalpha.app/v/UnF8-b3xRy0/), Oct 27, 2026
- Moment: 22:18 to 25:41 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/each-big-iron-is-designed-to-carry-five-gpu-racks/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/UnF8-b3xRy0/?t=1338

## Quote

> “Each one of our big irons, additionally, has **six laser links** on it to be able to transmit data to neighboring big irons or to transmit data down.”
> — [Baiju Bhatt](https://realalpha.app/builders/baiju-bhatt/) at [23:21](https://realalpha.app/v/UnF8-b3xRy0/?t=1401) · The Shawn Ryan Show

## Takeaways

1. Each Big Iron targets one megawatt of power.
2. The design budgets five NVIDIA NVL72 racks per spacecraft.
3. Six laser links connect it to neighboring units or the ground.

## About this segment

Baiju Bhatt describes a 15,000-kilogram orbital unit built to generate about a megawatt, with five GPU racks and laser links. Its integrated layout is meant to provide more interconnected compute than separate smaller satellites.

From “The Space Technology That Could Change History Forever”, Oct 27, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/UnF8-b3xRy0/)

## Transcript

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

[22:27](https://realalpha.app/v/UnF8-b3xRy0/?t=1347) So there's the big iron. So you can see here it gets to space. This is the whole upper stage of the rocket. We deploy out the solar panels and then the shell of the rocket, the fairing, folds out and becomes the method of heat transfer. It's pretty big. How big is it? It's bigger than a football field. It's 15,000 kilograms, roughly. It produces enough power to power about 800 homes. Like, it's a big goal thing. And when we talk about power in the data center world, I think sometimes we lose sight of just how much power we're actually talking about here. This is a megawatt of power. This is like a pretty significant amount of power. We generate it with pretty traditional solar panels.

[23:30](https://realalpha.app/v/UnF8-b3xRy0/?t=1410) Each one of our big irons, additionally, has six laser links on it to be able to transmit data to neighboring big irons or to transmit data down. We're targeting very high bandwidth laser links. Our team has been working on laser and optic development for the better part of two and a half years now. And the big relevant bit here is the amount of compute that we're able to put into the satellite. So each one of these things, we're budgeting about five racks of, for example, NVIDIA NVL72 racks.

[24:09](https://realalpha.app/v/UnF8-b3xRy0/?t=1449) per spacecraft. But it's kind of hard to tell how big this is. So maybe this will help. Wow. Yep. The American football field. Yeah, and a big iron, which is obviously why we need a big space to build the big iron but let's let's just kind of articulate what we're doing here and in kind of the simplest terms right if you if you look at what our approach is it's building a rocket that is just big enough to build to put this payload into space and this basic approach is driven by the idea that when you're talking about compute more interconnectivity is inherently better than less right and so rather than building a vehicle that could take many different satellites to space that could do AI compute you'd actually rather have one big one you'd actually rather have one big iron. Oh, God. But as we all know, cowboys

[25:31](https://realalpha.app/v/UnF8-b3xRy0/?t=1531) Space is not the only space company in the world.