According to Wiktionary, Russian uses different words (as do a lot of languages for that matter) for the two concepts, so it's hard to imagine how this could have happened.

Yes, I know it's a joke. I think it would have been a cleverer joke if Russian was a language that used the same word for both, like English.

But then, if you do find a language that does this, the word order is generally different, and the word is generally conjugated into an adjective so it still can't be mistaken for a noun. (This is based on what happens with "European Space Agency" which would otherwise be a better candidate for the joke.)

[–] Allero@lemmy.today 1 points 2 days ago

Yeah, Russians refer to space (the thing up above) as "cosmos" (which also happens to be present in English), and spacebar as probel (i.e. a white/blank segment)