Woman Pays $30K To Get Her Astronaut Boyfriend Back To Earth

If you haven’t put the pieces together already, let us do it for you. It turns out the boyfriend was actually a scammer, and the poor lady was swindled out of her $30,000. The woman in question eventually realized this, too and contacted the police after making a total of five payments to the not actually space-based swindler. While you might be able to turn up somewhere on earth without a way to get back to the point you set off from, it’s not really something you can do on the International Space Station.

As Space.com explains, there was controversy earlier this year when a comment from a Russian government official was misinterpreted, and a video circulating on social media suggested an American astronaut due to return to Earth aboard a Russian vessel had been left on the ISS. This wasn’t the case, and despite strained diplomatic tensions between Russia and the U.S. — the ISS is still an area where the two nations cooperate. If you’re on a government-sanctioned mission like the scammer claimed he was, the government that sent you up there will have a way to get you home. The ISS isn’t a floating bus terminal, and you don’t have to fork over large amounts of money for a ticket back. There is the option of traveling to the ISS privately, but the company managing the trip will expect you to pay for the return journey before you even set off for the station. It’s also far more expensive than $30,000, with a seat on a shuttle there and back costing a reported $50 million.