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The Shawn Ryan Show · 3 min · Oct 27, 2026

The first engine prioritizes reliability and fast production

Baiju Bhatt says the first engine is optimized for reliability and quick production, not maximum performance. He says the team can pursue more performance later, after bringing the capability online quickly.

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.

About this segment

Baiju Bhatt says the first engine is optimized for reliability and quick production, not maximum performance. He says the team can pursue more performance later, after bringing the capability online quickly.

From “The Space Technology That Could Change History Forever”, Oct 27, 2026. Watch the full episode

“It's meant to be reliable and fast to build. There's definitely more performance in this engine. We can solve that problem at a later point in time.”
Baiju Bhattat 28:55 · The Shawn Ryan Show28:55

Takeaways

  1. The initial gas-generator engine is a speed-to-build choice.
  2. Peak performance is deferred until later iterations.
  3. The same engine architecture is intended for both rocket stages.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 31:43Rocket parts can double as data center hardware6:49
  2. 10:45Orbit could ease data centers’ energy and land demands7:37
  3. 46:57Repeatable launch sites could scale space infrastructurePro pick 5:19

  4. 28:35The first engine prioritizes reliability and fast production3:14

  5. 22:18Each Big Iron is designed to carry five GPU racks3:23Up next

Transcript

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

  1. 28:45

    There she is, Clyde's Hill Engine. That's what you saw us testing at least a part of earlier in the video. And this is a gas generator cycle engine. This is not a racehorse. It's meant to be reliable and fast to build. There's definitely more performance in this engine. We can solve that problem at a later point in time. The goal with this program is to bring this capability online as quickly as possible.

  2. 29:19

    We'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. But each engine produces about 300,000 pounds of thrust, which is kind of difficult to even wrap your head. How close are you to this? I mean, this is what we saw. This was one of the first videos we watched. Yeah. And then being at your facility today, talking to Warren, I mean, from hiring him to getting that, was that the first test? We did some testing a little bit before that this week, but I think that's in earnest the first test.

  3. 29:57

    And that was today? Yeah. And the next test is tomorrow morning. At 7 a.m., right? How are you moving that fast? We are very motivated. We really, really care about making this happen. And you just can't fake that, you know? Like the most interesting things go to the people in life that are the most motivated, in my experience. engines. But rather than waxing poetic, let's talk about rocket engines. Yeah, so this one is, I mean, these things are crazy how powerful they are. It's like kind of difficult to wrap your head around it. And I asked the team to kind of try to articulate some way to explain what this thing does. And I think the best they came up with is one of these little engines here has enough thrust to hurl 50 f-150s to orbit wow yeah we were talking we're having this whole conversation about you know it's like well we're we're we're brainstorming all the different stuff

  4. 31:01

    we can do to to test the engines test the vehicles and there was a discussion at some point by the way there's very opinionated people at this company and if you have an idea about something there will almost certainly be somebody in the corner being like terrible idea never do it But this terrible idea was doing the hopping, like building a small rocket and doing little hops and staying under a certain height limit.

  5. 31:24

    And the point I was told was that these engines are so powerful, and you're just like, pew, straight to orbit. So it would be a different engine. But that being said, this is the engine that's the single architecture that actually works for both the upper and lower stage of the rocket.