for not for the vision of men like eugene schumaker. >> whitehouse gene schumaker, the moon landing ase know it wouldn't have existed. >> reporter: a pretty big claim. but that's the way geologists remember it. in fact, they say their boss, a top gun at the u.s. geological survey, made a lot of stuff happen on that historic mission. >> originally they didn't want him to pick up any. >> didn't want any television. >> nothing. >> are you kidding me? >> not kidding. we worked the very hard here to use television in our field exercises and show them how valuable it was. can you imagine no television, the famous steps down the -- >> as bad as they were. >> as bad as they were, that is absolutely iconic. >> ready for me to come up? >> reporter: as the story goes, schumaker had a lot of convincing to do. >> he had to convince nasa because originally it was just a rah-rah plant the flag there. >> it seems so elementary to us. >> they didn't want to take a rock hammer, anything to hurt their suit and poke a hole in their suit. they didn't even want us to photograph the rocks. >> gene would talk