Everyone knows the phrase. It’s been dropped in sitcoms, spoofed in boardrooms, and relentlessly meme’d. But most people quoting it have no idea they’re getting it wrong. What started as a real-life tense mid-space alert became a Hollywood zinger and landed in our everyday lingo.In this piece, we will explore what really happened on Apollo 13, how Hollywood fine-tuned the drama for the big screen, and why that slight tweak turned a line from a technical mishap into one of the most iconic phrases in modern culture.The Real Crisis: What Happened to Apollo 13? The crewmembers of the Apollo 13 mission, step aboard the USS Iwo JimaSource: Flickr Apollo 13 was supposed to be NASA’s third moon landing. Instead, it became a textbook case of what to do when everything goes sideways.Two days into the mission, somewhere around 200,000 miles from Earth, an oxygen tank exploded. The command module, Odyssey, lost power quickly, and the crew was in survival mode. The command module pilot, Jack Swigert, reported to the mission control center in Houston, saying, “Okay, Houston… we’ve had a problem here.” The mission control center asked the crew to repeat. Jim Lovell repeated, “Ah, Houston, we’ve had a problem.”That one little word—had—changes everything. It's present perfect tense — which doesn't pack the same immediate punch as present tense. Why the mix-up? Blame the movie (we’ll get there) and the fact that most people weren’t reading NASA’s audio transcripts in 1970.Back in Houston, mission control got busy fast. Engineers scrambled...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Today