I also love Eric's closing line:
It seems equally likely that the more ambitious elements of Sphere will, at some point in the future, disappear into the ether.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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.
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.
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.
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.
The original article contains 548 words, the summary contains 157 words. Saved 71%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
In fairness, the US also did this. The Blackbird project was originally designated RS-71. Johnson flubbed it.
you could have had TWO top secret spyplanes smh
That's quite the humble brag. Is this anecdote designed to intimidate Putin's critics or to reinforce to everyone that Rogozin is Putin's man?
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