“Cowboys as a concept have become almost completely free-range.” I see what you did there…

Let's not forget the archetype of the saloon pianist so dedicated to his job that he will keep playing his anachronistic ragtime set regardless of how much violence is going on around him.

"Cowboys are problematic, but in space no one can hear your baggage!" -Red, slamming a drink onto the table in the corner of the space saloon. Probably.

fun fact, deserts aren't defined by sand but a lack of precipitation, this is why antarctica is considered a desert. this means most of space is in fact a desert unless your in some asteroid belt right around a stars liquid water proximity.

My favorite Stock Western Character is the grave digger/coffin maker/mortician. There's always some creepy dude tucked into the corner who is just waiting for the Gunfight to finish up.

7:33 Ma'am, you forgot the Chinese railroad workers. And the one samurai that wandered in somehow.

Technically,  space has a lot more sand in it, the local density is less certainly,  but since the scale of your travels are bound to be exponentially larger, in any practical sense your exposure to sand will be much greater in space than on a terrestrial desert.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine not only works as a space western, it also has some good meta-commentary on the genre. In the very  first episode, Doctor Julian Bashir is setting up his clinic on the titular space station, and is waxing poetic about how he finally gets the chance to practice "real frontier medicine". Whereupon the station's first officer Major Kira Nerys informs him that, as a native of Bajor, this "lawless backward frontier" is her home, and she does not appreciate him treating her home as set dressing for his cowboy fantasies.

I posit that going through time in the reverse direction, we get "Wagon Train Across the Ionian Islands," aka "Odysseus doing everything except going home"

Tim Curry: "I'm escaping to the ONE place that hasn't been corrupted by Capitalism... SPACE!"
Arthur Morgan: "Hey mister."

16:25 By far, my favorite part of when anime tackles western culture is when they have the religious folk swinging around crosses like greatswords. That just makes me smile.

By this definition I think Fallout: New Vegas counts as a Space Western despite taking place in Nevada.

12:16 "A sci-fi story? [puts on hat] Gasp! Perry the sci-fi story?!"

Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, and Outlaw Star: the holy Trinity of space western anime

Cowboy has devolved into simply "the gunslinger" (no more cows)

So long, space cowboy

This is why I think Star Wars keeps finding its way back to Tattooine - it fits the aesthetics of the Western so strongly

22:56 If you're curious, this is a giant skull pile of buffalo killed by white settlers & the US Army specifically to starve out Native Americans.

The endangerment of buffalo wasn't an accident. It was policy.

19:48 to be fair, a lot of old westerns' protagonists are people who left their lives after being on the losing side of "that" civil war, which further ties the westerns to their Japanese uncles where the wandering ronin is often a ronin who lost their lord in the japanese warring states civil wars

Really like the bringing up the Civil War connection with Westerns, because the fact that traditional Westerns are very rarely made anymore means a lot of people forget about it. A lot of protagonists in old Westerns were explicitly ex-Confederates, and one of the most iconic Westerns of all time, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, was set during the Civil War, though the titular trio were not directly involved with either side (barring Angel Eyes posing as a Union sergeant).