An ambitious billionaire has revealed his plans to colonise Mars - and charge 80,000 brave souls $500,000 to be flown there.

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX, has announced his vision for life on the Red Planet.

He says the settlement plan would start small, with a pioneering group of fewer than 10 people, who he would take there on a reusable rocket powered by liquid oxygen and methane.

Musk, already the first private space entrepreneur to launch a successful mission to the International Space Station this spring, says what would begin by first sending fewer than 10 people could blossom 'into something really big.'

'At Mars, you can start a self-sustaining civilization and grow it into something really big,' he told the Royal Aeronautical Society in London last week while awarded the society’s gold medal for his contribution to the commercialization of space.

Laying out precise details and figures to his 'difficult' but 'possible' plans, the space pioneer says the first ferry of explorers would be no more than 10 people at a price tag of $500,000 (£312,110) per ticket.

'The ticket price needs to be low enough that most people in advanced countries, in their mid-forties or something like that, could put together enough money to make the trip,' he said.

Rather than lounging around on an interplanetary vacation, the passengers would be sent to work, carrying with them equipment to build sustainable housing on the dusty and currently barren soil for future generations.

Immediate ground work would focus on building transparent domes pressurized with CO2 while possibly covered in a layer of water to serve as protection from the sun.

With the CO2, Mars' soil would be capable of growing crops for food, he said.

Additional equipment carried over could also produce fertilizer, methane and oxygen using the atmosphere’s natural elements of nitrogen, carbon dioxide and its surface of ice water.

Musk believes one person out of every 100,000 people would be interested in making the journey with 8 billion expected on Earth by time his plans become reality.

(Read by Brian Salter. Brian Salter is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

私营太空公司SpaceX的创始人、首席执行官亿万富翁艾龙•马斯克已经宣布了他对火星生命的宏图。

他说，殖民计划会从小起步，先送10人以下的先锋队去火星，他将用一艘以液态氧气和甲烷驱动的可重复使用的火箭运送这些人前往火星。

就在今年春天，马斯克已经成为第一个成功完成国际空间站飞行任务的私营太空企业家。马斯克说这个10人以下的先驱项目会发展成“宏伟大业”。

上周英国皇家航空协会在伦敦给马斯克颁发了协会的金质奖章，表彰他为太空商业化所做的贡献。马斯克在表彰大会上说：“在火星上，你可以先建设起自给自足的文明，然后逐渐发展成伟大的火星文明。”

这位太空先驱列举了他“艰巨”但“可行”的计划的精确细节和数字，他说运送的第一批探险者将不超过10个人，票价为每人50万美元（合312110英镑）。

他说：“票价需要低到让发达国家的大多数四十多岁的中年人都能筹到的地步。”

这些乘客可不是去火星度假旅游的，他们是去干活的。他们将用携带的设备在火星当前灰尘覆盖的贫瘠土地上为未来数代人建设耐久性住房。

他们到火星后将即刻开展的地面工作主要是建造密封透明的穹顶形二氧化碳增压建筑，外表层可能会覆盖一层“水墙”，以防止穹顶内居民受到太阳辐射伤害。

他说，有了二氧化碳，火星的土壤就能种植庄稼。

带去的其他设备还可以用火星大气中天然的氮气、二氧化碳和表面的冰水制造出肥料、甲烷和氧气。

马斯克相信每10万人中会有1人对这次火星之旅感兴趣，而在他的计划变成现实之前，地球上将迎来80亿个新生命。