Millionaire Dennis Tito will Send Married Couple to Mars in 2018

It turns out that we may closer than ever to sending someone to Mars--or at least near it. A team led by millionaire and former space tourist, Dennis Tito, plans to slingshot a married couple around the Red Planet in less than five years.

The plan, outlined today by Tito and his colleagues, would be a single flight that would take the husband-and-wife team as close as 100 miles to Mars. It would involve the couple being cooped up for 16 months together in a cramped capsule. Yet it could help bring us a step closer to actually placing a person on the planet.

The private, non-profit project is named Inspiration Mars. It won't be getting funding from NASA, but instead will receive money from Tito. Although there's no word about how much the entire flight will cost, outside sources suggest that it could be anywhere between $1 to $2 billion.

So how exactly will the couple get to Mars? There will be no lander involved. Instead, the two-person crew will fly to the planet in a construction that will involve the use of a private rocket, a small space capsule and a habitat that may be inflatable. The sparse design will keep the cost low. Currently, the mission is merely sending the couple near Mars; there's no word whether any experiments will be conducted.

While the mission may sound exciting and attainable, there are a few problems that need to be addressed. The issue of radiation protection is glossed over, according to BBC News. In addition, more work will need to be done in order to improve recycling technologies that convert urine to water.

So why choose a married couple to take the flight? In an interview with BBC News, Jane Poynter, one of the women involved in the project, said, "I can attest from personal experience from living in Biosphere 2 that having somebody you really deeply trusted and cared for was an extraordinary thing to have." She spent a total of two years locked away in a sealed ecosystem with seven other people in 1991.

The couple would receive extensive training before taking their trip and would be able to draw on psychological support from mission control throughout the journey.

Currently, the mission is set to launch in 2018.