How big is Cowboy Space's Big Iron satellite and how much compute does it carry?

Baiju Bhatt said each Big Iron satellite is bigger than an American football field once deployed, weighs about 15,000 kilograms and produces about a megawatt of peak power, enough for roughly 800 homes. It is budgeted for about five racks such as NVIDIA NVL72 racks, plus six laser links to talk to neighbours and the ground. He contrasted that with a rival's satellites carrying about one rack each.

• The full constellation is planned at 20,000 satellites and about 20 gigawatts, which Bhatt compared to Tennessee's grid.
• Bhatt argued one large satellite gives more interconnected compute than many small ones.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on The Shawn Ryan Show (2026-10-27). Read the whole episode summary →

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