Now if anyone’s mentally unfit for a governmental executive position, it’s Moonbeam. Real tyrant he is.
Brown proposed the establishment of a state space academy and the purchasing of a satellite that would be launched into orbit to provide emergency communications for the state—a proposal similar to one that was indeed eventually adopted. In 1979, an out-of-state columnist, Mike Royko, at the Chicago Sun-Times, picked up on the nickname from Brown's girlfriend at the time, Linda Ronstadt, who was quoted in a 1978 Rolling Stone magazine interview humorously calling him “Moonbeam”.
The above is from wiki, but I can't find the California satellite it claims exists.