earth schmidt snappedt this photo, now known as the blue marble picture. wehe had our view of a nearly full earth.ur i too took that from about 34,000 miles away. nasa tells me it is still the most requested photograph from theaw apolo archives. apolo 17 arrived to the moon on december 11th. and during the dissent to the surface, they learned that being in command while an honor is also a heavy burden. you had to change some things at the last second. that s right. but you can t push the stop button and say, oops, we have a problem. let s talk about it. you get down to 200 feet and we got within what we call the dead man s curve. if the decent engine failed you cannot stage fast enough to fire the engine and go back into orbit. one way or the other you will land. and then when i touched the light thatblue says shut the engine down because if you landed with the jenin burning it is possible a back pressure could have exploded the engine.