So, SpaceX is a super whizzy, futuristic spaceship company, but what's the goal of all this? Why, to put a million people on Mars, that's what. This seems pretty ambitious considering that, at the moment, the grand total number of humans on Mars is zero (now that we've managed to get Matt Damon back), but the reasoning behind the million figure is pretty solid. Musk reckons that a million people is the minimum number required to create a self-sustaining population. A Martian colony would be at the mercy of the year-long commute time from Earth to the Red Planet should they need anything. If the colonists are going to support themselves then there will need to be enough people to deal with everything that goes with building a society. Mining, farming, building, governing, engineering and basically everything else that keeps us ticking over here on Earth will need to be represented on Mars, and a carefully selected population of a million should just about cover it. So, how does Elon Musk and SpaceX plan on getting those people up there?
