Billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk has stunned critics joking about releasing a sex tape of his ex-girlfriend Grimes to help fund space travel.

The proposal was made by one of Musk’s Twitter followers, who are sometimes referred to as “Muskbros”, and have previously been accused of being a “fan army” that harasses women online.

“Can a sex tape with Grimes generate enough buzz to raise funds for space travel?”, one of Musk’s followers asked on Twitter.

Musk’s strange response: “That’s a reasonable question”. He and Canadian singer Grimes split up last year after rapper Azealia Banks released texts, claiming they showed Grimes revealing intimate details of her boyfriend’s life.

On Twitter, one of Musk’s followers asked: “Gonna sell it on VHS?”

Others were less than impressed, with another Twitter user adding: “Remember @elonmusk is already big buzz because of his skills and hard work using his consciousness - if you think sex is buzz then you confirm that you are not thinking reasonably - go learn knowledge that are useful come back with better ideas raise money with engineering design”.

The larger-than-life tech Tesla founder has made his name as a big thinker who plans to build human colonies on Mars - but his comments have left fans baffled on more than a few occasions.

Last year the 47-year-old created a media storm after describing British diver Vernon Unsworth as a “paedo” on Twitter.

Musk appeared to fire off the outrageous insult after Mr Unsworth had earlier criticised Musk, describing his efforts to help rescue 12 Thai boys trapped in a flooded cave “a PR stunt”.

Musk’s engineers had built a state-of-the-art submarine and shipped it to Thailand to help free the young football players.

However, Mr Unsworth claimed that it wouldn’t have worked adding: “(Mr Musk) can stick his submarine somewhere where it hurts.”

After initially apologising, Musk then followed up with further accusations claiming he frequented an area “renowned for child trafficking”.

Vernon Unsworth is now trying to sue the American in three different countries.

Just two months after the bizarre outburst at Unsworth, the South African born bigshot was seen puffing on a joint while appearing on the Joe Rogan experience podcast.

Musk decided to take a drag on air because the drug is legal in the state of California.

However, weed is prohibited for people with government security clearance which Musk was given in 2015 when SpaceX began launching satellites for the Pentagon.

Shortly after Musk’s appearance on the podcast, the shares for his car company Tesla Inc dropped more than six per cent.

This article has been edited and republished from The Sun with permission.