I was originally going to make a Mir joke, but of course Mir was de-orbited years ago. This experiment was done aboard a satellite.
Damn well should have been--no way do we need roaches aboard the
Of course, the solution to an infestation of pests, in space, is extremely simple: vent the compartment to hard vacuum for an hour or so. If roaches can survive that, we're screwed anyway.
But I doubt they can. It wouldn't surprise me, but I doubt it.
Now if this were a 1950s sci-fi shocker, the space roaches would mutate into something horrible and eat people and their pets. (Or, in fact, if this were a present-day Hollywood movie. Except instead of space travel making them mutate, it would be some kind of genetic experiment.)
But simply flying in zero G and mating isn't going to result in that kind of outcome unless there is something seriously weird happening. The baby roaches should be normal roaches; and I don't know what result the Russians were expecting from this experiment.
They must be reading NASA's playbook.