Elon Musk’s Mars-colonisation vision got closer to reality at the end of last month when SpaceX successfully put the SES-10 communications satellite into Earth orbit, using a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket with a first stage that had already completed one flight.

The mission demonstrated the type of technology that could help make Mars settlement economically feasible.

Talking at a post-launch conference, Mr Musk said: “There needs to be at least a 100-fold, if not perhaps a 1,000-fold, reduction in the cost per ton to Mars — actually, maybe 10,000-fold — and re-usability is absolutely fundamental to that goal.

So this is a very helpful proof point that it is possible, and I hope people start to think of it as a real goal to which we should aspire — to establish a civilisation on Mars.”

Mr Musk has long said that he founded SpaceX back in 2002 chiefly to help make humanity a multi-planet species. Last September, he unveiled the broad outlines of SpaceX’s plans to do just that.

The company aims to establish a million-person city on Mars using a rocket-spaceship combo called the Interplanetary Transport System (ITS), which is in the early development stage. Both the ITS rocket and the spaceship will be reusable. Indeed, the booster will be designed to launch at least 1,000 times.

“The design intent is that the rocket can be re-flown with zero hardware changes — in other words, the only thing that changes is that you reload the propellant — 10 times,”

Mr Musk said, referring to the Falcon 9 first stage. “With moderate refurbishment that doesn’t have a significant effect on the cost, it can be used at least 100 times. We could make it 1,000, but we aren’t quite there yet.”

Mr Musk expects SpaceX to launch about six “proven” Falcon 9 first stages on orbital missions this year, and perhaps double that number in 2018, although the decision to go with new or used on each mission will be down to SpaceX’s customers.

Those who choose a used booster will not pay the full $62 million Falcon 9 launch price, but what the discount will be is yet to be confirmed.