Space pioneer to send 80,000 people to Mars in two decades

Musk, the first private space entrepreneur to launch a successful mission to the International Space Station, said what would begin by first sending less than 10 people could blossom "into something really big".

"At Mars, you can start a self-sustaining civilisation and grow it into something really big," Musk told the Royal Aeronautical Society in London.

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 USD 500,000 per ticket, the 'Daily Mail' reported.

"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.

Instead of 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, the report said.

Immediate ground work would focus on building transparent domes pressurised with carbon dioxide while possibly covered in a layer of water to serve as protection from the Sun.

Musk, founder and CEO of private spaceflight company SpaceX, claimed with the help of carbon dioxide, Martian soil would be capable of growing crops for food.

Equipment carried over could also produce fertilisers, methane and oxygen using the

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