Origin/etymology | Apollo 13 (mission) |
---|---|
Original form | "Okay, Houston ... we've had a problem here"[1] |
Coined by | Jack Swigert (April 14, 1970) |
"Houston, we have a problem" is popularly misquoted as a phrase spoken during Apollo 13, a NASA mission in the Apollo space program and the third meant to land on the Moon. After an explosion occurred on board the spacecraft en route to the Moon at 55:54:53 (03:07 UTC on April 14, 1970),[1] Jack Swigert, the command module pilot, reported to Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas: "Okay, Houston ... we've had a problem here."[2] After being prompted to repeat his words by Jack R. Lousma, the capsule communicator at Mission Control, Jim Lovell, the mission commander, responded: "Ah, Houston, we've had a problem."[1]
The 1995 film Apollo 13 used the slight misquotation "Houston, we have a problem", which had become the popularly expected phrase, in its dramatization of the mission.[1] The phrase has been informally used to describe the emergence of an unforeseen problem, often with a sense of ironic understatement.[3][4]
a13fj
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)