Russia renamed its ambitious satellite program after Putin misspoke its name

This is part of the reason why you don't want to put a person with a fragile ego in charge of a major country.

That's some real "using a sharpy to correct a hurricanes path" energy Puty...

"At first it was called Ehfir," Putin said. "And at one of my public speeches I was talking and said it was Sfera. I arrived at the Kremlin, and the former Roscosmos head greeted me and said, 'Vladimirovich, you said it was project Sfera, Sfera you said. That's what it is, project Sfera.'"

Rogozin, who was listening to these remarks, acted immediately—presumably to save his boss from embarrassment. After Rogozin said the constellation was named Sphere, Putin recalled that he asked how's that? Rogozin replied that it had already been renamed Sfera and not to worry.

Laughing, Putin added, "So I didn't even make it back and it's already renamed to Sfera. So I said, well, OK then."

That's almost cute.

Oddly enough he is not the only person who has done this.

https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/12/06/how-the-sr-71-got-its-name/

Can cancer please kick this fucking douche’s ass and just keel over already?

I swear to god only the good people die young

Shit is straight out of dictator movie

That's so stalinesque it's fucking hilarious. Gonna get a sequel to "the death of stalin" at some point if we keep getting stories like this.

See, kids? That's how you avoid falling out of a window.

Wait till you hear about the RS-71 Blackbird :D

Change the name or come choke on a poisonous mushroom. It's a very easy choice.

We've always been at war with Eurasia.

I don't really care what that degenerated fuck said.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

(tldr: 3 sentences skipped)

The Sphere constellation is intended to provide broadband Internet service from middle-Earth orbit to Russia and high-resolution Earth observation satellites.

As is usual with Russian space projects, because they tend to be poorly funded, the timeline for Sphere's deployment has been delayed and its scope reduced.

(tldr: 1 sentences skipped)

Before 2018, this satellite program was known as Ehfir (Ether), a reference to the invisible substance once thought to fill the universe and the medium through which light waves propagated.

(tldr: 14 sentences skipped)

According to a Roscosmos press release issued at the beginning of 2022, the Sphere program was hampered by the need for "colossal government spending" on other projects, including dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic.

(tldr: 7 sentences skipped)

Earlier this month, at the International Astronautical Congress in Azerbaijan, the new leader of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, referenced the Sphere constellation.

Now, he said, plans for the constellation will include the capacity to provide direct-to-cell communications, which necessarily means that some of these satellites will be very large.

(tldr: 1 sentences skipped)

The original article contains 548 words, the summary contains 177 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!