Richard Branson. (Andres Otero/WENN.COM)

Sir Richard Branson wants to start a colony on Mars.

Well, who doesn't?

Branson is the entrepreneur who got his start in record shops and rock and roll and moved on to, you know, everything -- his Virgin umbrella includes hundred of companies that are involved in everything from soup to nuts. (Trains, planes and automobiles, telephones, media, animation, food, public health, environmental studies, new fuels, research grants, head transplants, volcano extinguishing and anything else you care to mention, imagine or make up.)

Branson, 62, wants to go to Mars. He wants to take the experience of the few hundred, "privileged astronauts" who have been into space and democratize the situation. He says colonizing the red planet is realistic and something he anticipates doing in his lifetime. Mars is sort-of potentially habitable, as it appears to have frozen water, some thin atmosphere and as yet, no culture to speak of; it's just like L.A.

Branson says he knows just the people to bring along for that first colonization attempt on Mars:

"Obviously, you are going to want scientists initially. You're going to want physicians, you're going to want comedians, you're going to want fun people, beautiful people, ugly people - a good cross-section of what happens on Earth - on Mars. People have got to be able to get on together, because it's going to be quite confined."

Scientists? Physicians? Comics? Fun people? The beautiful and the ugly? Branson's idea of the what a cross-section of humanity might look like is probably a little different from everyone else's, but if we had his resources, we'd take as many people from reality television to populate Mars as would fit in the spaceship.

When it comes time to live and breed on a hostile planet, you want the kind of survivors who have what it takes to crawl over everyone else as required, and lie, cheat, steal and betray to protect their own interests. Like cockroaches and rats, the people who should go to Mars should be those indestructible Me-First folks who'd sell their own granny or flog their child's sex tape to get ahead.

You know -- the types who'd not only air their dirty laundry in public but wash it, fold it and put it away in public, too, if there was money involved. You want settlers with the crust of a Kardashian, the morals of a Bachelorette, the double-dealing abilities of a Big Brother schemer and the stamina of a Dancing With the Stars contestant.

And Dr. Phil. Branson did mention a doctor, didn't he?

liz.braun@sunmedia.ca