We hear that cockroaches can survive high radiation, live for a week without water, a month without food, etc.

Suppose we sent a "roach motel" with minimal heating (maintain > 0°C) to the equator during the Martian summer, how long could cockroaches survive?

I would assume that a week would be the absolute upper limit, given that the low atmospheric pressure would preclude water in the liquid state.

So, how long, and why?

Roachs require warmth and humidity. With some species dying if the humidity drops below 80% like those Madegascar roachs. You are going to need at least some atmospheric pressure to force oxygen into their bodies. Mars on a good day has 1/1000 the air pressure of Earth at sea level. After a whopping 18 inches in altitude the pressure drops off dramatically.

Conditions are more hospitable at the bottom of the ocean.

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"The beauty of that discussion of averages is that you don't have to be an expert in Apollo or in photography in order to see where this time study "analysis" breaks down. You just have to be, well...not an idiot." -JayUtah

only a few minutes - no oxygen

I'm not recruiting those delicate, wimpy madagascar roaches, nooo. I want the hardcore antarctic guys that can hold out a bit longer.

I'm sure they're going to die, but I'm betting they'd live longer than an unprotected human. But is it seconds, minutes, hours, or ...

New Scientist: It's one small step for a cockroach

Better give them little spacesuits to wear.

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Actually, hours would be a better estimate for most roaches. Tests using low oxygen (N2) or CO2 to control insects including the cockroach.
Roach adults (~>90%) die after 1-2 hours, eggs and larval stages may take 10-40 hours to get 100% kill.

So, instead of expensive instruments looking for the building blocks of life, why not a device that releases one cockroach an hour through an airlock.

If there's anything organic in the area, a cockroach will find it.

Sounds crazy enough to work...

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"All your bias are belong to us." Ara Pacis
"A witty saying proves nothing." Voltaire

People have made mars jars and put various creatures in them. (I guess they ran out of experiments to do with magnifiying glasses.) A frog apparently lasted 20 minutes. But I don't know if:

a. The conditions inside the jar were accurate.

or

b. If this story is true.

What if you could bio-engineer a cockroach to be able to take in CO2 and covert it into usable O2?

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Fields of Space

LOGIC, n.
The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding.

In the Year 2525.

"One small step for (a) man. One giant leap for mankind".

If an astronaut doesn't need good grammar, niether does you.

Host of Seraphim

Then forget Mars (for now). You've solved global warming here on earth!

Why don't we just send ALL cockroaches (and other creepy crawlies) to Mars? Sounds like a good extermination technique, and they'll all be dead long before we get there.

Watch it Orrery, around these parts an idle muse can prompt somebody here to write you a small thesis on why your idea wouldn't be workable. With charts, graphs and photos with circles and arrows and a paragragh on the back of each.

Since I've been here I've done it by accident at least three times. These guys are great though.

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"The beauty of that discussion of averages is that you don't have to be an expert in Apollo or in photography in order to see where this time study "analysis" breaks down. You just have to be, well...not an idiot." -JayUtah

DO NOT SEND ANY COCKROACHES HERE !

WE HAVE DROPPED THE ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE, AND ELIMINATED THE FREE OXYGEN.

DO NOT RE INFEST OUR PLANET.
from the Martainn high ambassador to the UN.

That's a smart idea. Take one of our most hated insects and populate Mars with them. If by some freakish chance some of them survived, they would be waiting for us to bring our warm homes stuffed with food. Kind of like the insect version of a pizza delivery. I can hear the first female on Mars on the radio screaming for a Terminix delivery.

I could think of a few places *much* closer than Mars where I would like to deposit all of Earth's cockroaches, but that's beside the point.

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I believe that the taste of crow is not that of embarrassment, but rather that of education.

If so, you'd have a plant, and your cockroach plant better have a source of water, minerals, and sunlight!

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol.

Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that.

I am human. Fully human.

Be CAREFUL what you teach them. When they start BUILDING little spacesuits, you're in trouble.....

I had another thought...

If I dropped it onto Mars' surface, given the ambient temperature and pressure, the temperature of the surface, granularity of it's soil, influx of solar radiation and composition of atmospheric gasses, while immediately following it with the underside of my boot...

...it'd last about 1/10th of a second.

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I am Mugs, of the Alien clan of Usa, Nordamerica, a Terran, of Sol.

Perception isn't reality. It's merely an abstraction thereof, and quite often not a very good one at that.

I am human. Fully human.