A Crater, Please, For Mac

A Martian crater named for him would be

Most suitable, to help remember Mac

And teach new generations how much he

Once meant to us who'd gladly have him back.

He looked toward Mars with a special eye,

Both skeptical and curious; the Face

And Fort intrigued him but he ne'er let fly

With theories. Only questions had a place

In what he wrote and thought and shared. His point

Was not to prove that someone once lived there

But that we'll never know until a joint

Or single effort makes the trip - a fair

And reasoned one. There's myst'ries to explore

And Mac's no longer with us keeping score.

Tweet

In Which Canada Shall Do Its MATMOS

Mars' methane has long puzzled those who care
To ponder the Red Planet (and of these
I do know many). How did it get there
And in such unexpected quantities?
Comes now, from Canada, upon the scene
A new spectrometer, which shall be sent
Mars-bound soon; the year Two-Thousand-Sixteen
Shall see the MATMOS sniffer there, bright, keen
And ready to precisely gauge where, when
And maybe how the gass appears. Perhaps
'Twill furnish proof of life at last. Till then,
We can but wonder, as that best of chaps,
Mac Tonnies, pointed out, we'll never know
Until at last we try and boldly go!

July 21, 1969 - And 2009

My eyes are ever drawn to the night sky.
Last Friday, Jupiter and sev'ral moons
Had me transfixed; I'd still be there, my eye
Pressed to a scope. Nights turn always to noons,
Though. Now today the world is looking back
To when our moon first felt a human step,
But some of us are also keeping track
Of Jupiter's black spot. I did not get
To see it Friday night; no black spot was
There to be seen back then. It might be so
That just ere that astronomer from Oz
Observed it that a comet struck a blow!
Meanwhile the men who first trod Luna's dust
Declare that now our job is Mars or bust.