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Our future: A futuristic design of a protective dome on Mars shows a similar idea to Musk's that would be transparent and pressurized with CO2 allowing Mars' soil to grow life-sustaining crops. 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. | 
