According to Elon Musk the billionaire behind the SpaceX company and Tesla Motors, there would have to be a million people willing to colonize Mars to establish a functional civilization there.

According to Elon Musk the billionaire behind the SpaceX company and Tesla Motors, there would have to be a million people willing to colonize Mars to establish a functional civilization there.

Musk is quoted in an interview saying: "I think there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multi-planetary, in order to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event that something catastrophic were to happen..."

His SpaceX company, which already sends supplies to the International Space Station, has recently been commissioned to send astronauts there as well.

Musk is already looking further afield and hoping to launch a manned mission to the Red Planet sometime in the near future.

So far, the largest astronaut crew to be sent into space was made up of eight people.

Musk has previously mentioned the Mars Colonial Transporter, which is a large spacecraft that would be able to send large groups of people to Mars at the same time.

Although Musk had talked about an ideal population size of around 80 thousand people on Mars, he adjusted this number to a million to have enough people to build and operate an industrial base that is sustainable in the extreme environment on the surface of Mars.