Danny Puff

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida, - A nonprofit foundation wants to recruit a man and a woman - possibly a married couple - for a bare-bones, 501-day journey to Mars and back that would start in less than five years, project organizers said on Wednesday.

The mission, expected to cost upwards of $1 billion, would be privately financed by donations and sponsorships.

Project founder Dennis Tito, a multimillionaire who in 2001 paid $20 million for a trip to the International Space Station, said he will pay start-up costs for two years to begin development of life-support systems and other critical technologies.

Currently, there are no U.S. human spaceships in operation, but several are under development and expected to be flying by 2017.

That leaves little time to take advantage of a rare planetary alignment that would allow a craft to loop around Mars, coming as close as about 150 miles to the planet's surface, before returning to Earth.

The launch window for the mission opens on January 5, 2018. The next opportunity is not until 2031.

"If we don't make 2018, we're going to have some competition in 2031," Tito told Reuters.

"By that time, there will be many others that will be reaching for this low-hanging fruit, and it really is low-hanging fruit," said Tito, who set up the nonprofit Inspiration Mars Foundation to organize the mission.

Project chief technical officer Taber MacCallum said U.S. industry is up for the challenge.

"That's the kind of bold thing we used to be able to do," said MacCallum, who also oversees privately owned Paragon Space Development Corp.

"We've shirked away from risk. I think just seriously contemplating this mission recalibrates what we believe is a risk worth taking for America," he said.

TIGHT QUARTERS

The spacecraft will be bare-bones, with about 600 cubic feet (17 cubic meters) of living space available for a two-person crew. Mission planners would like to fly a man and a woman, preferably a married couple who would be compatible during a long period of isolation.

The capsule would be outfitted with a life-support system similar to the one NASA uses on the space station, which recycles air, water, urine and perspiration.

"This is going to be a very austere mission. You don't necessarily have to follow all of NASA's guidelines for air quality and water quality. This is going to be a Lewis and Clark trip to Mars," MacCallum said, referring to the explorers who set out across the uncharted American Northwest in 1803.

If launch occurs on January 5, 2018, the capsule would reach Mars 228 days later, loop around its far side and slingshot back toward Earth.

The return trip takes 273 days and ends with an unprecedented 31,764-mph (51,119-kph) slam into Earth's atmosphere.

Once the spaceship is on its way, there is no turning back.

"If something goes wrong, they're not coming back," MacCallum said.

The crew would spend much of their time maintaining their habitat, conducting science experiments and keeping in touch with people on Earth.

Tito said he expects the cost to be similar to a robotic mission to Mars. NASA's ongoing Curiosity rover mission cost $2.5 billion. A follow-on mission scheduled to launch in 2020 is expected to run $1.5 billion.

"You're really flying this mission without a propulsion system on the spacecraft. It's in the most simple form," Tito said.

NASA is working on its own heavy-lift rocket and Orion space capsule that could carry crews of four to an asteroid and eventually to Mars.

"We can just barely, every 15 years, fly by Mars with the systems we have right now," MacCallum said. "We're trying to be a stepping-stone."

(Editing by Jane Sutton and Xavier Briand)

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BARCELONA (Reuters) - A strange phenomenon hit Hong Kong in late 2011.

As the clock hit 10 pm each night a Coca Cola ad aired on television, prompting thousands of viewers to grab their phones and start shaking them frantically to virtually "catch" the falling bottle caps on the screen and win instant prizes.

Dubbed Chok! Chok! Chok! - meaning rapid motion in local slang - the interactive campaign by McCann Worldgroup became a hit, and sent viewers at home, in cinemas and in front of giant outdoor screens into a frenzy. (http://link.reuters.com/wux36t)

Nine million people saw the ad - 380,000 downloaded the Chok! Chok! Chok! app in the first month - and its success indicates that marketers may be finally figuring out how to direct ads at consumers via mobile phones.

"The consumer is there so we as marketers start to salivate," said Mike Parker, chief digital officer for McCann, in an interview at the Mobile World Congress. "But people are so underwhelmed by banner ads on tiny screens. We are all still searching for the best way forward."

Mobile advertising is set to grow by more than 50 percent a year over the period to hit $40 billion in 2016, according to Informa research, but the figures are still tiny compared to television ads. Global ad spend in 2012 was $500 billion.

Though advertisers are keen to harness the mobile boom, no one has perfected the art of using mobile devices to target adverts to consumers.

There remains a vast discrepancy between the amount of time consumers spend on their mobile devices and the advertising dollars companies spend there. In the U.S., mobile ads only accounted for 1 percent of marketing spend in 2011, according to the Internet Advertising Bureau, even though people spent some 10 percent of their media time looking at their phones.

Mobile has long proved almost impenetrable for a host of reasons, including the small screen, poor presentation of mobile websites and consumers' resistance to the invasion of a space seen as more private than a computer.

Even Google, which dominates online search, is still grappling with how to make money from ads on smartphones, while Facebook is trying to weave marketing messages into people's newsfeeds without offending them.

WINNING FORMULA

With many brands still wary of annoying consumers with lots of tiny ads or repetitive text messages, some like Coca Cola hit upon the idea of rewarding mobile owners with coupons, prizes or free content as a way to make a connection.

Helping them make that link is Brian Wong, chief executive of San Francisco-based kiip, a mobile app rewards network that connects brands and companies with consumers. He says his startup has found a winning formula - and that people have contacted him to say thank you for the adverts.

"The rewards are a pleasant surprise for the user. It's like a gift that comes out of the blue," Wong said.

In one campaign run via kiip by Pepsi, a person logging their morning 5 kilometer jog on a fitness app like MapMyRun sees a grey band pop up on the top of their smartphone screen. If they click on it, a window appears: "What a workout! Refresh yourself with a bottle of Propel Zero" and they are emailed a coupon for the fitness drink to redeem at a local store.

Targeting such "moments of achievement", such as when a gamer passes a level or a cyclist beats his personal best, allows marketers to target people at opportune moments in ways that are relevant to them, Wong says.

Kiip only gets paid if the customer redeems the reward and as a result brands are willing to pay more for a system based on results. Although Wong won't say how much kiip charges, it is likely more than the average price for mobile ads, which in turn are cheaper than ads on PCs. A perception that banner ads on small screens are not very effective and the glut of available space has kept prices capped at around $1 per thousand views.

LOCATION TARGETING

For mobile ads to become more effective - and lucrative - marketers have to get more creative at tapping mobile's advantages, such as the direct link to a person all day and the location data.

The industry is also working on coming up with better metrics to measure effectiveness of mobile ads, which could one day boost their value.

One way to improve the effectiveness of mobile marketing is to link up a person's web browsing history on computers with their smartphone. Mark Strecker, the chief operating officer of mobile advertising technology company Amobee, said companies were in the early stages of such work.

For example, when a shopper walks into a retailer like the Gap, their phone would know they had earlier looked at jeans on the store's website from their home computer and send them details about availability of their size.

The additional information about users also means agencies now make fewer mistakes.

"If we see, from the location, that someone has gone to a car showroom then we could send them car ads," said Dani Cushion, executive at mobile ad platform Millennial Media.

"But if we see they go to the showroom every day, then they probably just work there."

(Reporting by Kate Holton; Editing by Sophie Walker)

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NEW YORK (AP) The Tribeca Film Festival will open with a documentary about the National, along with a performance by the Brooklyn band.

The festival announced Thursday that "Mistaken for Strangers," which documents the National on tour, will premiere April 17. The film is directed by Tom Berninger, brother to lead to singer Matt Berninger.

Tribeca's Chief Creative Officer Geoff Gilmore called the film "a highly personal and lighthearted story about brotherly love."

The band will perform following the film's premiere. In 2011, Tribeca also paired a movie and concert with Elton John performing after Cameron Crowe's music documentary "The Union."

The Tribeca Film Festival runs April 17 through April 28. It will next week announce the feature film slate for its 12th annual festival.

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LONDON (Reuters) - U.S. singer Anastacia has been diagnosed with breast cancer having successfully battled the disease in 2003, she said in a statement posted on her Facebook page.

The 44-year-old, who had major success outside the United States with hits like the 2000 dance favorite "I'm Outta Love", has been forced to cancel plans to tour Europe starting in London on April 6.

"I feel so awful to be letting down all my amazing fans who were looking forward to 'It's A Man's World Tour'," she said in a statement. "It just breaks my heart to disappoint them," she said.

She added that she will continue writing and recording her new album and hopes to schedule a new tour as soon as possible.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) For a time in Cold War America, Van Cliburn had all the trappings of a rock star: sold-out concerts, adoring, out-of-control fans and a name recognized worldwide. He even got a ticker-tape parade in New York City.

And he did it all with only a piano and some Tchaikovsky concertos.

The celebrated pianist played for every American president since Harry Truman, plus royalty and heads of state around the world. But he is best remembered for winning a 1958 piano competition in Moscow that helped thaw the icy rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Cliburn, who died Wednesday at 78 after fighting bone cancer, was "a great humanitarian and a brilliant musician whose light will continue to shine through his extraordinary legacy," said his publicist and longtime friend Mary Lou Falcone. "He will be missed by all who knew and admired him, and by countless people he never met."

The young man from the small east Texas town of Kilgore was a baby-faced 23-year-old when he won the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow just six months after the Soviets' launch of Sputnik embarrassed the U.S. and inaugurated the space race.

Cliburn returned to a hero's welcome and the ticker-tape parade the first ever for a classical musician. A Time magazine cover proclaimed him "The Texan Who Conquered Russia."

The win also showed the power of the arts, creating unity despite the tension between the superpowers. Music-loving Soviets clamored to see him perform. Premier Nikita Khrushchev reportedly gave the go-ahead for the judges to honor a foreigner: "Is Cliburn the best? Then give him first prize."

In the years that followed, Cliburn's popularity soared. He sold out concerts and caused riots when he was spotted in public. His fame even prompted an Elvis Presley fan club to change its name to his. His recording of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 1 with Russian conductor Kirill Kondrashin became the first classical album to reach platinum status.

Time magazine's 1958 cover story quoted a friend as saying Cliburn could become "the first man in history to be a Horowitz, Liberace and Presley all rolled into one."

Russian pianist Denis Matsuev, who won the Tchaikovsky competition in 1998 at the age of 23, the same age as Cliburn, said Cliburn's "romantic style captured the hearts of Soviet audience."

"Everyone was in love with him," Matsuev said. "And he loved the Soviet Union, Russia and the Russian public."

Matsuev, who knew Cliburn personally, described him as an "incredibly delicate, kind and gentle man who dedicated his entire life to art."

He also used his skill and fame to help other young musicians through the Van Cliburn International Music Competition, held every four years. Created in 1962 by a group of Fort Worth teachers and citizens, it remains among the top showcases for the world's best pianists.

"Since we know that classical music is timeless and everlasting, it is precisely the eternal verities inherent in classical music that remain a spiritual beacon for people all over the world," Cliburn once said.

President George W. Bush presented Cliburn with the Presidential Medal of Freedom the nation's highest civilian honor in 2003. The following year, he received the Order of Friendship of the Russian Federation from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"I still have lots of friends in Russia," Cliburn said at the time. "It's always a great pleasure to talk to older people in Russia, to hear their anecdotes."

After the death of his father in 1974, Cliburn announced he would soon retire to spend more time with his ailing mother. He stopped touring in 1978.

Among other things, touring robbed him of the chance to enjoy opera and other musical performances.

"I said to myself, 'Life is too short.' I was missing so much," he told The New York Times in 2008. After winning the competition, "it was thrilling to be wanted. But it was pressure, too."

Cliburn emerged from his sabbatical in 1987, when he played at a state dinner at the White House during the historic visit of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev leapt from his seat to give the pianist a bear-hug and kisses on the cheeks. Nancy Reagan, then the first lady, has called that night one of the greatest moments of her husband's presidency.

"After not playing in public for many years, he agreed to make an exception for this occasion, and his beautiful music brought the whole room to tears," Reagan said in a statement Wednesday, adding that "the world has lost a true treasure."

Cliburn was born Harvey Lavan Cliburn Jr. on July 12, 1934, in Shreveport, La., the son of oilman Harvey Cliburn Sr. and Rildia Bee O'Bryan Cliburn. At age 3, he began studying piano with his mother, herself an accomplished pianist who had studied with a pupil of the great 19th century Hungarian pianist Franz Liszt.

The family moved back to Kilgore within a few years of his birth.

Cliburn won his first Texas competition when he was 12, and two years later he played in Carnegie Hall as the winner of the National Music Festival Award.

At 17, Cliburn attended the Juilliard School in New York, where fellow students marveled at his marathon practice sessions that stretched until 3 a.m. He studied under the famed Russian-born pianist Rosina Lhevinne.

Between 1952 and 1958, he won all but one competition he entered, including the G.B. Dealey Award from the Dallas Symphony, the Kosciusko Foundation Chopin Scholarship and the prestigious Leventritt. By age 20, he had played with the New York Philharmonic and the symphonies of most major cities.

Cliburn's career seemed ready to take off until his name came up for the draft. He had to cancel all shows but was eventually excused from duty due to chronic nosebleeds.

Over the next few years, Cliburn's international popularity continued as he recorded pieces ranging from Mozart to a concerto by American Edward McDowell. Still, having been trained by some of the best Russian teachers in the world, Cliburn's heart was Russian, with the Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff concertos.

After 1990, Cliburn toured Japan numerous times and performed throughout the United States. He was in the midst of a 16-city U.S. tour in 1994 when his mother died at age 97.

Cliburn, who made his home in Fort Worth, endowed scholarships at many schools, including Juilliard, which gave him an honorary doctorate, and the Moscow and Leningrad conservatories. In December 2001, he was presented with the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors Medallion at the televised tribute held in Washington.

He practiced daily and performed limited engagements until only recently. His last public appearance came in September at the 50th anniversary of the prestigious piano competition bearing his name.

Speaking to the audience in Fort Worth, he saluted the many past contestants, the orchestra and the city: "Never forget: I love you all from the bottom of my heart, forever." The audience responded with a roaring standing ovation.

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Associated Press writer Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.

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Online:

Van Cliburn Foundation: http://www.cliburn.org

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LOS ANGELES (AP) Lindsay Lohan is committed to turning her life around and wants to record public service announcements on the dangers of domestic violence, alcohol abuse and drunken driving, her attorney said Wednesday.

Mark Heller told The Associated Press that the actress' plans are independent of a criminal case that could return her to jail on charges that she lied to police about being a passenger in her car when it slammed into a dump truck in June.

The "Liz & Dick" star has been repeatedly sentenced to jail, rehab, and community service since her first pair of arrests for driving under the influence in 2007. She spent several months in court-ordered psychotherapy until a judge released her from supervised probation in March 2012.

As part of the intense psychotherapy sessions, Lohan is in the beginning stages of trying to become an inspirational speaker to young people, he said.

"I think she suddenly woke up one morning and had an epiphany and she suddenly realized and appreciated the seriousness of the events that led to her being in court," Heller said.

"She's going to try to inspire hope in people," he said. "I think it will be good for her. It certainly won't hurt others."

Heller mentioned Lohan's intent to become an inspirational speaker in a letter to prosecutors and a judge that was obtained Tuesday. He said he will meet with prosecutors on Friday to try to reach a resolution in Lohan's newest case, which includes misdemeanor charges of reckless driving and obstructing officers from performing their duties.

She has pleaded not guilty. Lohan, 26, was on probation at the time of the crash and faces up to 245 days in jail if a judge determines her conduct violated her probation in a 2011 necklace theft case.

Officers suspected alcohol might have been involved in the June accident on Pacific Coast Highway, but the actress passed sobriety tests at a hospital and she was never charged with driving under the influence.

Santa Monica police Sgt. Richard Lewis said officers did not give Lohan a field sobriety test at the accident scene because she and her assistant were injured in the crash and were taken to a nearby hospital. While officers could not rule out that Lohan might have been drinking, he noted that she did not show signs of impairment.

Celebrity web site TMZ, citing anonymous sources, reported Wednesday that a bottle of alcohol was found next to Lohan's sports car after the crash. Lewis said he could not discuss evidence in the case, but noted that the actress was not charged with drunken driving.

Heller wrote in a motion filed last week that officers found a bottle that they initially thought was urine, but might have contained wine. His filing, which seeks a delay or dismissal of charges against the actress, states that "upon information and belief" the bottle's contents were never tested.

Lohan's case returns to court on Friday, although the actress is not required to attend.

Heller is asking a judge to dismiss the case against Lohan because officers ignored the actress' request to talk to her attorney before being interviewed, court records show. He said he is prepared to defend Lohan at trial if necessary, but is hoping a deal can be worked out. He is seeking a delay in the case to have time to prepare and allow Lohan to demonstrate she is improving her life.

Threats from judges and jail sentences that are invariably cut short because of overcrowding haven't helped Lohan, Heller said. "None of it really brought closure to this predicament that led to this most recent event."

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

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WASHINGTON (AP) Four major universities are joining theater companies in Boston, Baltimore, Washington and Atlanta in a project to commission new plays, music and dance compositions about the Civil War and its lasting legacy 150 years later.

The National Civil War Project is being announced Thursday in Washington and will involve programming over the next two years to mark the 150th anniversary of the war between the North and the South. Beyond commissioning new works, organizers plan for university faculty to integrate the arts into their academic programs on campus.

Under the program, Harvard University will partner with the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.; the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center will join CENTERSTAGE in Baltimore; George Washington University is working with Arena Stage in Washington, and Atlanta's Alliance Theatre will join Emory University.

Each collaboration will evoke unique perspectives on the Civil War in each region.

At Harvard, a new piece called "The Boston Abolitionists" about the abolitionist movement and the trial of a fugitive slave will be performed in May. Separately, Matthew Aucoin, an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, is using Walt Whitman's poetry about being a medic to develop a new opera.

In Atlanta, Alliance Theatre and Emory will develop a new theatrical production of U.S. Poet Laureate Natasha Trethewey's Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Native Guard," with a workshop planned for 2014. It recounts the story of a black Civil War regiment assigned to guard white Confederate soldiers on Ship Island off Mississippi's Gulf Coast.

Arena Stage Artistic Director Molly Smith, who helped guide the project, said this is a chance to reevaluate the Civil War and consider the issues that still resonate in American life.

"This is an anniversary of what is arguably one of the most important times in American history," she said. "And the same questions behind state rights and civil rights continue to infuse who we are as a country."

In September, the University of Maryland will host a national conference on civil rights and health disparities among minority populations to mark the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

Choreographer Liz Lerman, a 2002 MacArthur Foundation "genius" fellow, helped in developing the partnerships between theaters and universities during a semester spent at Harvard. She said artists can help professors animate their scholarship as more traditional lectures move online, and the Civil War is a good subject to connect art and academics.

"It's something about the fact that we're still trying to understand it," Lerman said. "There are enough civil wars still going on in the world, I myself am trying to understand what it must be like."

Lerman is developing a new dance theater piece in Washington called "Healing Wars" to explore the role of women and innovations in healing for amputees from the Civil War through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Characters will migrate between past and present. The piece will feature actor Bill Pullman and eight dancers.

Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust, a Civil War historian, has been leading the university to integrate the arts with academic pursuits, through theater, exhibits or other art forms.

"Engaging students through art and art-making is one of the ways in which universities prepare young women and men for life in a world that is far better connected and far more complex than at any other point in human history," she wrote in an email about the Civil War project.

At this anniversary of the war, she said it's important to remember how the values of freedom and equality were defined in President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg address as the war's purpose.

George Washington University President Steven Knapp said the Civil War transformed American history, culture and industry even the concept of American democracy by redefining equality. Tackling such a subject between academia and theater could provide a new model for learning, he said.

"It's an experiment," Knapp said, "to see how far we can go in bringing together the strengths of the university and the strengths of the theater company."

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Follow Brett Zongker at https://twitter.com/DCArtBeat

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) Managers for U.S. pop singer Anastacia say she has canceled a planned performance in Dubai and an upcoming European tour after being diagnosed with breast cancer a decade after her first battle with the disease.

A statement Thursday says the 44-year-old performer will cancel all appearances and travel until further notice.

Anastascia, who has had multi-platinum album sales in Europe, Australia and elsewhere, was scheduled to perform March 30 at the Dubai World Cup, the world's richest horse race.

Her European tour was set to begin in London on April 6.

She successfully battled breast cancer in 2003.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) Kristen Kish made winning the "Top Chef: Seattle" finale look easy.

In reality, preparing her five-course meal on the fly as the Bravo cooking competition's judges and a crowd of diners spectated from the sidelines was a non-stop endeavor requiring several hours of preparation and some phony silverware.

The 28-year-old chef de cuisine at Boston restaurant Stir was crowned champion of the 10th season Wednesday and took home the $125,000 grand prize after facing off against Brooke Williamson, the 34-year-old co-executive chef of Los Angeles restaurants Hudson House and The Tripel.

Kish's winning menu consisted of chicken liver mousse, citrus and lavender cured scallop, bone marrow and red snapper with leeks, Little Gem lettuce, tarragon, uni and shellfish nage.

"At the end of the day, my cooking is not super complicated," Kish said after winning. "My goal for this menu was just to do simple, good, elegant food with precision and excellence, taking simple things like chicken liver mousse, bone marrow or a piece of fish and executing them well."

Here's a taste from behind the scenes of Kish's win at the "Top Chef" finale filmed earlier this month:

Kish and Williamson's finale battle played out in less than an hour on TV, but it actually lasted more like eight hours. The chef'testants each had a set amount of time to prepare each course, and an audio snafu delayed production by an hour. However, the clock and the cooking never stopped during the ongoing "Iron Chef"-like showdown. Even when Kish and Williamson faced critiques from the judges, their sous chefs were behind them readying the next courses.

The portions for diners were much smaller than those the judges devoured, and most of the crowd wasn't able to taste both finalists' dishes. Also, despite the presence of each winner from the previous nine seasons, they didn't have a say on who would join their ranks. ("That was more intimidating than anything," Kish later said. "It was kind of comforting because they knew what we were going through, but it was very intimidating because they can be some of the harshest critics.")

While the massive kitchen stadium erected inside a Van Nuys soundstage was impressive, the dining experience itself was more like a picnic. That's mostly because eaters had to taste the finalists' dishes with plastic flatware. "Top Chef" executive producer Dave Serwatka said they often use silver-toned plasticware instead of the real thing during filming because it doesn't make clanging and scratching noises that can be picked up by microphones.

Kish was selected as the winner before the final course, but she still managed to serve her dessert: a lemony olive oil cake.

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Online:

http://www.bravotv.com/top-chef/

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Follow AP Entertainment Writer Derrik J. Lang on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/derrikjlang .

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - A non-profit foundation wants to recruit a man and a woman - possibly a married couple - for a bare-bones, 501-day journey to Mars and back that would start in less than five years, project organizers said on Wednesday.

The mission, expected to cost upwards of $1 billion (659.4 million pounds), would be privately financed by donations and sponsorships.

Project founder Dennis Tito, a multimillionaire who in 2001 paid $20 million for a trip to the International Space Station, said he will pay start-up costs for two years to begin development of life-support systems and other critical technologies.

Currently, there are no U.S. human spaceships in operation, but several are under development and expected to be flying by 2017.

That leaves little time to take advantage of a rare planetary alignment that would allow a craft to loop around Mars, coming as close as about 150 miles (241 kilometres) to the planet's surface, before returning to Earth.

The launch window for the mission opens on January 5, 2018. The next opportunity is not until 2031.

"If we don't make 2018, we're going to have some competition in 2031," Tito told Reuters.

"By that time, there will be many others that will be reaching for this low-hanging fruit, and it really is low-hanging fruit," said Tito, who set up the non-profit Inspiration Mars Foundation to organize the mission.

Project chief technical officer Taber MacCallum said U.S. industry is up for the challenge.

"That's the kind of bold thing we used to be able to do," said MacCallum, who also oversees privately owned Paragon Space Development Corp.

"We've shirked away from risk. I think just seriously contemplating this mission recalibrates what we believe is a risk worth taking for America," he said.

TIGHT QUARTERS

The spacecraft will be bare-bones, with about 600 cubic feet (17 cubic meters) of living space available for a two-person crew. Mission planners would like to fly a man and a woman, preferably a married couple who would be compatible during a long period of isolation.

The capsule would be outfitted with a life-support system similar to the one NASA uses on the space station, which recycles air, water, urine and perspiration.

"This is going to be a very austere mission. You don't necessarily have to follow all of NASA's guidelines for air quality and water quality. This is going to be a Lewis and Clark trip to Mars," MacCallum said, referring to the explorers who set out across the uncharted American Northwest in 1803.

If launch occurs on January 5, 2018, the capsule would reach Mars 228 days later, loop around its far side and slingshot back toward Earth.

The return trip takes 273 days and ends with an unprecedented 31,764-mph (51,119-kph) slam into Earth's atmosphere.

Once the spaceship is on its way, there is no turning back.

"If something goes wrong, they're not coming back," MacCallum said.

The crew would spend much of their time maintaining their habitat, conducting science experiments and keeping in touch with people on Earth.

Tito said he expects the cost to be similar to a robotic mission to Mars. NASA's ongoing Curiosity rover mission cost $2.5 billion. A follow-on mission scheduled to launch in 2020 is expected to run $1.5 billion.

"You're really flying this mission without a propulsion system on the spacecraft. It's in the most simple form," Tito said.

NASA is working on its own heavy-lift rocket and Orion space capsule that could carry crews of four to an asteroid and eventually to Mars.

"We can just barely, every 15 years, fly by Mars with the systems we have right now," MacCallum said. "We're trying to be a stepping-stone."

(Editing by Jane Sutton and Xavier Briand)

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