I know, right? Maybe we can engineer a hardy Martian goat that can eat the algae that puts oxygen into the air. Martian goats produce C02 and fertilize the soil. Now you have a source of dairy and meat for our future colonists. Imagine kids in the future, growing up dreaming of being goat herders on Mars.
And then after many generations, those goat herders, having long since lost their spacefaring technology, will create a few different and competing religions. A couple thousand years later, when Martians develop more advanced technology and even manage to send Martian people to their moons Phobos and Deimos in primitive spacecraft, they'll still be arguing about which of those religions is correct.
I think you'd want the goat to consume CO2, not produce it. There's already plenty of CO2 there. Other than that, your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Kids, hell. As long as I could get a good enough price to make sure my folks were well looked after, I'd sell my indenture tomorrow to go and be a goat herder on Mars.
