SpaceX chief Elon Musk unveiled on Tuesday, September 27 ambitious plans to establish a Mars colony by sending 100 humans at a time on massive spacecraft, possibly costing as low as $100,000 per person, AFP reports.

Taking the stage under a large globe of Mars at the International Astronautical Congress, Musk showed his vision for a giant rocket that would propel people to the Red Planet "in our lifetime."

"We need to go from these early exploration missions to actually building a city," he said to an overflow crowd at an expo center in the western Mexican city of Guadalajara.

Musk showed a futuristic video depicting his concept of an interplanetary transport system based on reusable rockets, a propellant farm on Mars and 1,000 spaceships on orbit, carrying about 100 people each.

The spacecraft would have a restaurant, cabins, zero-gravity games and movies, AFP says.

"It has to be fun or exciting. It can't feel cramped or boring," he said.

Musk later told reporters he was "optimistic" that the first human mission could leave Earth in 2024 and arrive on the Red Planet the following year.

Before that, SpaceX plans to send an unmanned Dragon cargo capsule to Mars as early as 2018.

The South Africa-born Canadian-American entrepreneur said the plan would require a "huge public-private partnership," but he did not announce any alliance with a government agency.

Meanwhile, experts warn that reaching Mars -- 225 million kilometers (140 million miles) from Earth on average -- and living there requires major engineering feats and a massive budget.