Houston, we have a problem. Oh, yeah. It is,
I mean, it's just five simple words, but they
carry this incredible amount of weight in our
culture today. They really do. You hear that
phrase and you immediately see Tom Hanks. You
see the white vest, the furrowed brow. You feel
that cold, creeping dread of being 200 ,000 miles
from Earth in a tin can that is slowly dying.
It's really the ultimate cinematic moment of
crisis. It absolutely is. It's the shorthand
we all use for disaster now. It gets used in
boardrooms when the quarterly numbers are down.
It's used in traffic when you miss your exit.
or even just when the coffee machine breaks on
a Monday morning. Yeah, exactly. It's arguably
one of the most famous quotes of the 20th century
right up there with I have a dream or Mr. Gorbachev
tear down this wall. It's totally iconic. It's
etched into the stone tablets of history. But
this is exactly why we are here today looking
at this massive stack of transcripts and flight
journals. It is also, technically speaking, a
lie. Well, lie might be a little bit of a strong
word, but it is definitely a fabrication. A Hollywood
rewrite. Yeah, a Hollywood rewrite that somehow
became more famous than the actual truth. So
that is our mission for this deep dive today.
We're going to look at the Apollo 13 mission
and not the movie, but the actual real world
event that took place in 1970. Right, the historical
reality. We are going to parse the literal second
-by -second transcript of what happened when
that oxygen tank blew. We'll figure out who actually
said what, why the technical details matter so
much, and honestly, why the misquote might actually
feel truer than the historical fact. It's such
a fascinating case study in how collective memory
works. I mean, we remember the movie version
because it fits how we want our heroes to sound.
Totally. But the reality... The reality is much
messier, it's a lot more technical, and in my
opinion, it's much more interesting. I completely
agree. And to get to the bottom of this, we are
pulling from a few different sources today. We've
got a great mix. Yeah, we're looking at the Wikipedia
entry for the phrase itself, which has some great
background. We are diving deep into the official
Apollo 13 flight journal for the exact transcripts.
And we've also got some really interesting production
notes and insights from the makers of the 1995
film. It's the perfect combination of history
and Hollywood. So let's set the scene for everyone
listening. It's April 1970. Apollo 13, this is
the third attempt to land humans on the moon.
And the vibe at the time was, it was weirdly
complacent, wasn't it? It was incredibly complacent.
You really have to remember the context of the
era. We had already beaten the Russians. Armstrong
and Aldrin had walked on the moon in 69. Right,
the big race was over. Exactly. And Apollo 12
had gone perfectly too. So by the time Apollo
13 rolled around, the American public was almost
bored with space travel. Which sounds so crazy
now. It does. The major TV networks weren't even
carrying the primetime broadcast from the ship.
It was treated as a quote unquote routine flight,
which is just insane when you think about the
physics involved. Routine space travel. That
is such a wild concept, like, oh, just another
Tuesday blasting three guys into a complete vacuum
on top of a giant bunk. I know, but that was
the atmosphere. Yeah. So they're cruising along.
They are about 55 hours into the mission. They've
just finished a TV broadcast where they showed
the world how they live in zero gravity. You
know, playing music, having a good time. Turnin'
around. Yeah. And then they sign off. The cameras
go dead. Yeah. And everyone just relaxes. And
this is where the timeline gets crucial, right?
We have a very specific time stamp for when everything
just goes completely sideways. We do. According
to the Apollo 13 Flight Journal, the critical
moment happens at 055 .55 .15 ground elapsed
time. OK. That translates to 55 hours. 55 minutes
and 19 seconds after liftoff from Kennedy Space
Center. So nearly 56 hours out into deep space.
And then mission control asks them to do something
that sounds like a kitchen chore. They ask them
to stir the cryo tanks. The cryo tanks. Yeah,
it sounds like you're making soup. But in this
context, the service module had these massive
tanks holding liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.
And over time, the contents would settle or stratify,
which made it hard to measure exactly how much
fuel they have left. So they needed to mix it
up. Exactly. They had these little fans inside
the tanks to mix up the super cold liquid and
get an accurate quantity reading. So it's literally
just a standard maintenance task. Completely
routine. So Jack Swigert, he's the command module
pilot, he flips the switch to turn on the fans
inside the oxygen tank. And that is the exact
moment the universe decides to throw a massive
curveball. A catastrophic one. Unknown to the
crew, there was some damaged Teflon insulation
on the wiring inside that specific tank. It was
actually a manufacturing defect from years prior.
Oh, wow. Yeah, so when Swigert flipped that switch,
a spark jumped. And in a pure high -pressure
liquid oxygen environment, a spark is, I mean,
it's game over. It's a bomb. Pretty much. The
tank didn't just catch fire, it exploded. It
blew the entire side panel off the service module.
Now, in the movie, this is portrayed as instant
chaos. You've got debris flying everywhere, master
alarms are screaming, dramatic music is swelling,
and Tom Hanks is looking instantly heroic and
concerned. Naturally. But we have the Apollo
13 flight journal right here. This is the verbatim
transcript of the audio loop between the ship
and Houston. What actually happens in that very
first second. Silence or rather confusion. Jim
Lovell recalled this later in a book called Apollo
Expeditions to the Moon. He said the astronauts
felt a bang and the ship shuttered. But they
didn't know what it was. Right. They thought
maybe a meteoroid had hit the lunar module or
maybe one of their own engine thrusters had just
misfired. They were just trying to process the
physical sensation. So it wasn't immediate panic.
Not at all. And then exactly 26 seconds after
the explosion, the radio crackles. And this is
where the famous line is supposed to be. This
is where everyone sitting at home expects to
hear, Houston, we have a problem. But it's not
there. The first person to speak isn't even Jim
Lovell, the commander. It's Jack Swigert. The
guy who flipped the switch? Yes. And he doesn't
say, Houston, we have a problem. He says, OK,
Houston, we've had a problem here. We've had
a problem. Past tense. Past perfect tense. Specifically,
we've had. That is just such a strange grammatical
choice for a life -threatening crisis. I mean,
a problem is urgent. It's happening right now.
We've had a problem. It sounds like you're reporting
a glitch that already happened and is over. Right.
Like, hey, the light's flickered. Just letting
you know everything is fine now. Precisely. And
that tells us everything we need to know about
their mindset. These guys are test pilots. They
are highly trained to suppress panic and just
analyze data. So he's not freaking out. Swiger
wasn't screaming for help at all. He was reporting
an anomaly. At that exact second, he had no idea
the side of his ship is blown out into the vacuum
of space. He just thought, OK, we had a weird
voltage spike and a loud bang. Let's report it
to the ground. He's treating it like a standard
glitch report. So how did Houston react to that?
Did they immediately jump into action stations?
No. And this is the part that people always forget.
Houston didn't even hear him clearly the first
time. Seriously. They missed the most famous
quote in history. Seriously. There was static
on the line or maybe just disbelief because the
telemetry screens on the ground were suddenly
going haywire. Wow. Jack Luzma was the capsule
communicator down in Houston. He's the only person
allowed to talk directly to the crew. And his
response to Swigert's life or death announcement
was literally, this is Houston. Say again, please.
Say again, please. That is so remarkably mundane.
The ship is bleeding oxygen into space. They
are actively losing electrical power. And the
guy on the ground is basically saying, sorry,
you broke up there. Come again. It really highlights
the fragility of the whole link. We think of
NASA as this omniscient, all -knowing force.
But in 1970, they were relying on radio waves
traveling over 200 ,000 miles. Yeah, the delay
in the static must have been nerve -wracking.
It was. It also shows that nobody on the ground
was panicked yet either. They were just confused.
So after Luzma asks for clarification, Jim Lovell,
the commander, jumps on the line. OK, so Swigert
said it first. Nobody heard him properly. So
the boss steps in to take over. Does Lovell finally
drop the movie line? He gets closer, but still
no. Lovell says, ah, Houston, we've had a problem.
I'm sorry, I repeat it. He repeats Swigert's
phrasing exactly. We've had. So both of them.
independently in the heat of the moment, chose
to frame this massive explosion as a past event.
We've had a problem. Yes. And then Lovell immediately
pitted straight to the data. He doesn't say the
ship is shaking or we are scared. He adds the
specific technical detail that defines the crisis
for the engineers on the ground. Which was? He
says. We've had a main B bus undervolt. OK, hold
on. Main B bus undervolt. We definitely need
to untack that. It sounds like straight up Star
Trek techno babble, but this was the specific
thing that told them they were in deep trouble.
It was the smoking gun. So what exactly is a
main B bus? Think of the Apollo command module,
kind of like a house. A bus is essentially a
main circuit breaker panel. It distributes electricity
from the power source, which were the three fuel
cells, to all the critical instruments, the guidance
computer, the life support, the radio. So the
ship has a main bus A and a main bus B. Exactly.
It's all about redundancy. If one fails, the
other one takes over. But Lovell sees a bright
warning light on the instrument panel telling
him that main bus B is undervolting. Meaning
the voltage is dropping. Right. The voltage is
dropping below the functional level required
to run the ship. Which means the power is dying.
It means the fuel cells aren't generating power.
And this is where the real detective work comes
in. Because the fuel cells run by combining liquid
hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Oh, I see. Yeah.
So seeing a severe power drop was their very
first clue that they were losing oxygen. No oxygen
means no power. That is absolutely terrifying.
But listening to the actual audio tapes, Lovell's
voice is incredibly flat. It's almost bored.
Main B bus undervolt. It's the right stuff. Right.
That's what Tom Wolf wrote about. It's the ability
to completely control your physiological response
to fear so you can continue to work the problem.
It's superhuman. If you listen to the tape, his
heart rate must have been spiking through the
roof, but his voice is just doing the job. He
isn't emoting at all. He's purely reporting.
It's so interesting, because if he had keyed
the mic and screamed, oh my god, the side of
the ship just blew off, Houston probably would
have panicked, too. Oh, absolutely. Panic is
contagious. But by saying main B bus undervolt,
he forced everyone in that room in Houston into
engineering mode. Like, OK, let's look at the
schematic. Why is the voltage dropping? Let's
solve the math. Exactly. He turned a desperate
survival situation into a math problem. And frankly,
That is exactly how they survived. They didn't
survive by being action heroes shooting their
way out of a problem. They survived by being
really, really good engineers. They had to figure
out how to shut down the dying command module,
move the three of them into the tiny lunar module,
use it as a lifeboat, and then calculate a trajectory
home with a physical slide rule. It really was
the ultimate hack, using the moon lander as a
space tugboat. Precisely. But it all started
with that very calm very grammatical, past tense
report. We've had a problem. Okay, so we have
established the historical reality. Sweer speaks
first. Lovell confirms. They both use the past
tense we've had. And they immediately get technical
with the undervolt. Right. Now let's fast forward
to 1995. Ron Howard is directing the movie Apollo
13. Tom Hanks is playing Jim Lovell. The production
team has the transcripts. They have the NASA
advisors on set. They know exactly what was said.
Why on earth did they change it? This is where
art collides with history in a really interesting
way. The screenwriter, William Broyles Jr., along
with the rest of the production team, looked
at that real line. Houston, we've had a problem,
and they realize something crucial for a film.
Which is? It sucks for a movie. It's just too
anti -climactic. It's structurally weak for a
narrative. Grammatically, we've had it implies
the problem is over. We've had a problem, and
now it's fixed. Let's move on. Right, like saying
we've had a flat tire, but we changed it so we're
back on the road. Or we've had a misunderstanding,
but we hugged it out. Exactly. But for the audience
sitting in a dark theater watching the movie,
The problem is definitely not over. It is just
starting. Because we saw the explosion. Yes.
The audience knows the ending, or at least they
know the immediate danger of the explosion that
just happened on screen. If Tom Hanks looks at
the camera and says we've had a problem, it creates
a weird disconnect. It makes the character seem
like he's behind the curve. That is a really
subtle but brilliant point. So changing it to
Houston, we have a problem, present tense, aligns
the character's realization with the audience's
anxiety. 100%. We have a problem is a declaration
of an active ongoing state of emergency. It's
signaled to the viewer, the nightmare has begun,
and we are in it right now. It completely synchronizes
the character's fear with the audience's fear.
It creates instant urgency. It validates the
suspense. And Broyles actually admitted this
in interviews later. He said the original line
just wasn't dramatic enough for the turning point
of a major Hollywood film. I can see that. And
there's another layer here, too, involving the
perspective of mission control. How so? Well,
in real life, mission control was confused for
a long time. They spent the next 15 minutes trying
to figure out if it was just a sensor error.
They thought maybe the instrumentation on the
ship was just glitching and giving bad readings.
Because things breaking in space usually are
just sensor glitches. Right. But in a movie,
you can't have 15 minutes of screen time with
guys in short sleeve button downs looking at
green screens saying, is that right? Maybe tap
the gauge. Let's wait and see. Yeah, that would
kill the pacing. You need to propel the story
forward. Right. You only have two hours to tell
a story that took four days to unfold. Exactly.
Yeah. So by having Hank say we have a problem,
it acts as a starting gun for the second and
third acts of the film. It tells the audience,
okay, the setup is done. Now we are purely in
survival mode. It's narrative efficiency. Real
life is messy and repetitive and full of static.
Movies have to be clean and linear. Precisely.
And honestly, it worked perfectly. The American
Film Institute ranked Houston, we have a problem.
as the number 50 greatest movie quote of all
time. Number 50 out of everything. Yeah. It beat
out thousands of lines from purely fictional
movies. It became the definitive cultural memory
of the event. It's funny because in a way, the
misquote has actually become the historical record
for most people. If you ask a random person on
the street what Jim Lovell said up there, they
will confidently quote the movie, not the flight
journal. It's the Mandela Effect of space travel.
We collectively remember the version that sounds
better to our ears. It's rhythmically superior.
Houston Paws, we have a problem, has a great
dramatic beat. Unlike the real one. Right. Ah,
Houston. We've had a problem here is clunky.
It has filler words. It has that passive hat.
It just doesn't sound like a movie poster. And
it's not just about the rhythm either. It's really
about the utility of the phrase today. We don't
just use it for space exploration anymore. It
has fully entered the everyday lexicon. Oh, absolutely.
It is everywhere. And what's really fascinating
from a linguistic standpoint is how we use it.
Linguists like Naomi S. Barron have pointed out
that we use it as ironic understatement. Break
that down for me. Ironic understatement. Well,
think about the immense gravity of the original
situation. Three men. dying in a vacuum, slowly
freezing to death, poisoning themselves with
carbon dioxide as the scrubbers fail. It is a
maximum level crisis. Right. It's literally the
worst possible scenario a human being could find
themselves in. But now you use that phrase when
you can't find your car keys in the morning.
Houston, we have a problem. You are deliberately
taking the language of a fatal catastrophe and
applying it to a trivial inconvenience. So the
humor comes from the contrast. Exactly. That
massive gap between the life or death survival
of the astronauts and your missing keys is where
the irony lives. It's a way of making fun of
your own situation. Like, I'm making this sound
like a space disaster, but really I just spilled
mustard on my shirt. Or, conversely, it's a way
of trying to summon that astronaut cool under
pressure. Even if you are actually panicking,
say your company's server just crashed, and you
are losing millions of dollars a minute saying,
Houston, we have a problem, is a way of projecting
competence to your team. Oh, that's interesting.
It says, I acknowledge the disaster, but I am
remaining calm like Tom Hanks. Even though Tom
Hanks was just acting, and the real Jim Lovell
was even palmer than the actor playing him. Exactly.
It's a simulation of a simulation. We are imitating
an actor imitating an astronaut. It reminds me
of other famous misquotes like Luke I am your
father. Darth Aider never actually said that
he said no I am your father or play it again
Sam in Casablanca. Why do we constantly do this?
Why do we collectively edit our own history?
Because our human brains prioritize meaning and
context over literal accuracy. Luke I am your
father provides its own context. It tells you
exactly who is being spoken to. Right, without
Luke it's just a random guy saying he's a dad.
Exactly. No, I am, your father requires the previous
line of dialogue to make any sense. Yeah. Houston,
we have a problem, is a complete self -contained
package. It stands completely alone. It doesn't
need the context of the main B bus undervolt
to be understood. It tells the whole story of
a crisis. In just five words. It's optimized
for memory. It's basically the viral version
of history. It really is. You know, I want to
go back to something you mentioned earlier about
the main B bus undervolt. We sort of glossed
over it, but that specific technical detail is
exactly why the misquote bothers some space purists,
isn't it? Because by cutting that second half
of the line, the movie removes the specific technical
competence of the crew. That is a very valid
critique. In the movie, the drama comes from
the raw motion. In reality, the drama came from
the intense troubleshooting. By removing the
technical jargon, you make the audience feel
the fear, but you maybe lose a little bit of
their respect for their incredible intellect.
Right. We have a problem is a cry for help. Main
B -Bus Undervolt is a diagnostic report. It implies
they already know partially what's going wrong.
Exactly. But... To defend the filmmakers a bit,
and specifically Ron Howard, if Tom Hanks had
looked at the camera and said, Houston, we've
had a main B bus undervolt, 99 % of the audience
would have gone, what does that mean? And the
tension would have completely deflated. Completely.
You would have needed another character to awkwardly
step in and explain, my god, Jim, that means
the power is out. In English, Jim. Right. And
then you're suddenly in a bad B movie. So the
simplification was entirely necessary for the
visual medium. You trade technical accuracy.
for emotional clarity. It's also worth noting
the shared credit here. In the movie, it's the
big Tom Hanks moment. He gets the dramatic close
up. But in reality, Swigert said it first. Poor
Jack Swigert. He really gets sidelined in the
pop culture version of this event. He was the
one who saw the warning light flash. He was the
one who felt the vibration first. He initiated
the radio call. But Lovell was the commander,
the senior officer on the ship. And in the very
hierarchical world of the military and NASA,
the commander's word is the official record.
Once Lovell repeated it, it became the definitive
report. Plus, let's be honest, having the biggest
movie star in the world play Lovell cemented
it in the culture. That helps. If Jack Swigert
had been played by Tom Hanks, maybe we'd all
remember Swigert's line instead. So if we zoom
out on all of this, we have a catastrophic explosion.
We have a calm, highly technical report using
the past tense. We have a confused mission control
asking them to repeat themselves. And then 25
years later, we have a screenwriter who needs
to make an audience sweat. So he changes the
tense and gives the line to the lead actor. That
is the complete anatomy of the quote. And now
it's number 50 on the AFI list. It's a meme.
It's a joke when you drop your keys. It's a universal
cultural touchstone. It has completely transcended
the event itself. There are people who use the
phrase every day who probably don't even know
it comes from Apollo 13. It's just an idiom now.
It's literally just part of the English language.
That is wild to think about. A specific technical
report from three guys in a tin can in 1970 has
become just how we talk to each other. That is
the raw power of storytelling. But I think it's
really important, like what we're doing today,
to actually go back to the source material. Why
is that? Because the source material tells us
that when the chips were truly down, these guys
didn't speak in flashy movie quotes. They spoke
in cold, hard data. And that data is why they
got home alive. They didn't need to be dramatic.
They just needed to be right. Exactly. They needed
to solve the puzzle before the air ran out. Before
we wrap up today, I want to pose a question to
you and really to you listening at home. We spent
this entire time debunking the quote. We know
it's historically wrong. We know we've had is
the absolute truth. But do you actually prefer
the movie version? Oh, that is the big question.
As a historian, I want accuracy. I always want
the footnote to be right. But as a human being,
I think I prefer we have a problem. Really? Because
it's active. We've had carerist is passive. We've
had sounds like you are submitting a grievance
form to HR. We have a problem. Sounds like you
are picking up a sword to fed a dragon. I love
that. It captures the true spirit of the struggle,
even if it messes with the literal letters of
the transcript. It captures the emotional truth
of the moment, even if it has to sacrifice the
factual truth to get there. Exactly. It forces
us to stay in the present moment of the danger.
When you say we have a problem, you are instantly
inviting the person on the other end of the line
to help you solve it. It's a collaborative call
to action. Which is exactly what the mission
was. Right. In the end, that is what Apollo 13
was. It was the ultimate human collaboration.
The crew in space and the ground team in Houston
working the problem together step by step for
four grueling days. So maybe the movie got the
words slightly wrong, but it gave the feeling
exactly right. I think that's a very fair assessment.
It translates the intense feeling of 1970 for
a modern audience perfectly. Something to mull
over the next time you drop a glass of milk in
the kitchen and mutter, Houston, we have a problem.
You're not just quoting a movie. You might actually
be channeling a very specific type of crisis
management. Just don't ask your spouse for a
main B bus undervolt report when you're cleaning
up the milk. That might be a little bit of overkill.
We will definitely try to keep the technical
jargon to a minimum in the kitchen. Thanks for
guiding us through the transcripts today. It
has been genuinely eye -opening to see how history
gets rewritten like this. Always a pleasure.
Keep questioning the quotes. And to you, listening.
Thanks for taking this deep dive with us. The
next time you watch the movie, you can be that
person who pauses it to explain the grammar.
Your friends will absolutely love you for it.
Or, you know, maybe just keep it to yourself
and appreciate the real history in silence. Just
a thought. Until next time.