Experts now say that future space colonies are likely to face food troubles and that could turn them into cannibals.
The professor of Astrobiology at Edinburgh University spoke to Metro about the challenges astronauts will face if they attempt to colonize places such as Jupiter's moon Callisto.
If the farming and crop systems failed, the colonizers would face dire consequences unless they received regular supplies from Earth. This might not be possible if they are far away.
He pointed to Sir John Franklin's 1845 exploration of the Arctic that resulted in the crew cannibalising each other.
The most sophisticated pieces of technology available at that time were Franklin's crew, who tried to find the north-west passage on ships. They had a new technology, but they got lost and ended up cannibalism.
If a group of people are put on Callisto, things will go wrong and the plant growth module will break down, they will eat each other if there is no other way to survive.
This might seem like a fairly bleak prediction, but it actually serves as a warning. The crop systems would need to be tested on places like the Moon and Mars before they are ready for colonization.
After adequate testing can we be certain that colonizers won't have to do their best impression to survive?
If you are going to dump 20 people several hundred million kilometers away from the Earth in an instant lethal environment on a moon, you need to be sure that it will work because if it doesn't it will fall apart quite quickly.
Humans would probably start eating each other in space.
Scientists are worried about the Simulated Mars Base.
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