Imaginative concepts including a 3D-printed building show how humans could one day live on Mars

Putting a human base on Mars has long been an aspiration for us Earthlings. For centuries people have been fascinated by the dusty and desolate Red Planet, ever since its discovery by Galileo in 1610, and as the mystic grew, so too did thoughts that little green men might be running around on it, an image popularised in magazines and on TV during the 1950s and 60s. Moon race fever had gripped the world, and after Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the lunar surface in 1969, the human race almost immediately set its sights on the next target of Mars. Though manned space exploration beyond Earth's orbit stalled in the decades that followed, a new space race involving billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Sir Richard Branson has reignited ideas for people to set foot on other worlds beyond our own. Chief among them is SpaceX CEO Musk, who has stated his desire to create a colony of one million people on Mars by 2050.