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Who really said it

Houston, we've had a problem

Spoken first by Jack Swigert 1931–1982 · NASA astronaut; command module pilot, Apollo 13
Verified Free to reuse

This one is real — it is the other version that is wrong. At 055:55:19 mission elapsed time on 13 April 1970, command module pilot Jack Swigert transmitted “Okay, Houston… we’ve had a problem here,” and after CAPCOM Jack Lousma asked the crew to say again, commander Jim Lovell repeated it in the exact familiar five words — “Ah, Houston, we’ve had a problem” — both preserved verbatim in the Apollo 13 Flight Journal ↗. The present-tense “Houston, we have a problem” that people often “correct” this to is dialogue written for Ron Howard’s 1995 film, which Wikiquote ↗ records as an alteration of what was actually said.

Last verified 27 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“Houston, we've had a problem” Jack Swigert, command module pilot, Apollo 13, transmitted at 055:55:19 mission elapsed time on 13 April 1970 and repeated seconds later by commander Jim Lovell as "Ah, Houston, we've had a problem. We've had a Main B Bus Undervolt." Recorded in the Apollo 13 Flight Journal's corrected air-to-ground transcript; Swigert credited by NASA's own accident history. The familiar "Houston, we have a problem" is the 1995 film's rewrite, not the transmission. · Verbatim: “Okay, Houston... we've had a problem here.”

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In context

Evoking the world of Jack Swigert — NASA astronaut; command module pilot, Apollo 13. Theme: "Houston, we've had a problem". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Houston, we've had a problem". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

What was actually transmitted

Transmission
Apollo 13 air-to-ground, 13 April 1970, 055:55:19 GET
Primary record
Apollo 13 Flight Journal (corrected transcript) — from NASA’s Apollo 13 Technical Air-to-Ground Voice Transcription, 1970
Spoken by
Jack Swigert, command module pilot — then repeated by commander Jim Lovell
The other version
“Houston, we have a problem” — dialogue from the 1995 film Apollo 13

055:55:19 Swigert: Okay, Houston…
055:55:19 Lovell: …Houston…
055:55:20 Swigert: …we’ve had a problem here. [Pause.]
055:55:28 Lousma: This is Houston. Say again, please.
055:55:35 Lovell: [Garble.] Ah, Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a Main B Bus Undervolt. Apollo 13 Flight Journal, Day 3, part 2

Timestamps are Ground Elapsed Time, and the two men briefly talk over each other. Note that Swigert reaches the words first, and that both use the past perfect — “we’ve had”. The oxygen tank had exploded moments earlier; the Main B Bus Undervolt was the symptom on the panel in front of them. Mission Control’s internal loop traffic between 055:55:26 and 055:55:30 — GUIDO and FLIGHT, talking to each other rather than to the spacecraft — is omitted, so this is an air-to-ground extract rather than an unbroken run.

NASA voice transcript, 1970
Apollo 13 Technical Air-to-Ground Voice Transcription
Apollo 13 Flight Journal — Day 3, part 2

How we verified this

  • 13 April 1970 — the transmission. The Apollo 13 Flight Journal ↗, whose page for this moment is titled “Houston, we’ve had a problem”, logs Swigert at 055:55:19–20 GET (“Okay, Houston… we’ve had a problem here”), Lousma at 055:55:28 (“This is Houston. Say again, please”), and Lovell at 055:55:35 (“Ah, Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a Main B Bus Undervolt”).
  • The primary record — and the correction to it. NASA’s contemporaneous Apollo 13 Technical Air-to-Ground Voice Transcription ↗, held on the NASA Technical Reports Server (“Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.”), logs the exchange at 02 07 55 19–35 elapsed — but it assigns the first call to the LMP and the CDR, and renders it “I believe we’ve had a problem here.” The speaker identifications and the exact wording used on this page follow the Flight Journal’s corrected transcript, and NASA’s own history article credits the call to Swigert.
  • NASA still writes it this way. The agency’s own history article, “Houston, We’ve Had a Problem” ↗, uses the past-perfect wording in its title and body, places the crew “some 205,000 miles from Earth”, and states that the warning lights “prompted Swigert to call Mission Control”.
  • Where the other version came from. Wikiquote’s sourced page for the 1995 film ↗ notes that “in real life, the quote was ‘Houston, we’ve had a problem’”, that the original phrase was pronounced by Swigert and repeated by Lovell, and that it “was altered to a present-tense in the film script”.
Public domain

The sentence was spoken over a NASA radio link by a NASA astronaut on a NASA mission, and NASA’s contemporaneous transcript of the loop ↗ is catalogued on the NASA Technical Reports Server with the explicit statement “Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.” Works of the United States federal government carry no copyright, so this wording is free to quote despite its 1970 date. The rewritten movie line, “Houston, we have a problem”, is a different matter: that one is 1995 screenplay dialogue and remains in copyright.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

What people get wrong about the version that is right

This is an inverted misquote. The wording most people think is the mistake is the authentic one, and the wording they think is authentic came out of a screenplay. What genuinely needs correcting here is the speaker.

Jim Lovell, who usually gets sole credit Half right

Lovell did say it — “Ah, Houston, we’ve had a problem” at 055:55:35 GET — but only after CAPCOM Jack Lousma asked the crew to repeat. The first transmission was Swigert’s, at 055:55:19. Lovell said so himself in his chapter of NASA’s 1975 Apollo Expeditions to the Moon: “Jack Swigert saw a warning light that accompanied the bang, and said, ‘Houston, we’ve had a problem here.’ I came on and told the ground that it was a main B bus undervolt” — quoted here ↗, which also credits Swigert as the one who coined the phrase.

Apollo 13 (1995), screenplay by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert Rewrite

Anyone who tells you the line is really “Houston, we have a problem” is quoting Tom Hanks, not the spacecraft. Wikiquote’s page for the film ↗ states outright that in real life the quote was “Houston, we’ve had a problem” and that the phrase “was altered to a present-tense in the film script”. Broyles explained the change as a matter of drama, not accuracy.

The 1974 television drama Houston, We’ve Got a Problem — and NASA itself in 1983 Third variant

The film was not first. Wikipedia records that the 1974 TV drama Houston, We’ve Got a Problem “had brought a misstatement of the phrase into popular culture years earlier”, and that in 1983 NASA used the now-current misquotation “Houston, we have a problem” as the title of its weekly radio programme about space history — both documented here ↗.

What actually crossed the gap between Apollo 13 and Houston on 13 April 1970 was: “Okay, Houston… we’ve had a problem here” (Swigert, 055:55:19 GET), then “Ah, Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a Main B Bus Undervolt” (Lovell, 055:55:35 GET) — both in the past perfect, both preserved verbatim in the Apollo 13 Flight Journal ↗.

Context

The famous misquote runs the other way

On the third day of the flight, with Apollo 13 some 205,000 miles from Earth, the crew had just finished a television broadcast when an oxygen tank in the service module exploded. What went out over the radio was not a cry of alarm but clipped engineering shorthand: something had happened, and here was the symptom. As NASA’s own account ↗ puts it, the Master Alarm and the Main DC B Bus Undervolt light came on a second or two after the bang, which prompted Swigert to call Mission Control. Lovell later fixed the moment at 21:08 hours on 13 April.

The past perfect was accurate. It was also, dramatically speaking, inert — and that is exactly why the 1995 film changed it. Screenwriter William Broyles Jr. explained the swap in terms quoted by Wikipedia ↗ from a 2017 Washington Post piece: the real line “is saying something has happened, and it’s over. The past perfect tense wasn’t as dramatic as ‘We have a problem’ — which meant that the problem was happening right then and was continuing, which in fact it was and would shortly cause the mission to abort.” He was right about the drama. The rewritten line ranked No. 50 on AFI’s 100 Greatest Movie Quotes in June 2005 — as a movie quote, which is exactly what it is.

The tense was the whole point. “We’ve had” is a report. “We have” is a crisis.

Why the drift is stubborn — and older than the film

The film usually takes the blame, but it inherited the problem. Wikipedia notes that although the Houston Chronicle later identified Ron Howard’s 1995 film as the source of the popular misquotation, “the error was of longer standing”: the 1974 television drama Houston, We’ve Got a Problem had already put a mangled version into circulation, and in 1983 NASA itself used “Houston, we have a problem” as the title of its weekly radio programme about space history.

By 1995 the wrong version was so entrenched that the film was, in effect, quoting the audience back to itself. The Apollo 13 Flight Journal makes the same point — Howard’s film used the misquote because by then it was what viewers expected to hear.

The result is an unusual trap: someone who knows the line “properly” from the movie will confidently correct a person who has just quoted it accurately.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Apollo 13 Flight Journal — Day 3, part 2apollojournals.org

The annotated air-to-ground transcript, second by second. The page is itself titled “Houston, we’ve had a problem” and carries Swigert’s call, Lousma’s “Say again, please”, and Lovell’s repeat, plus a note that the legendary line is the past-perfect one.
“Houston, We’ve Had a Problem”nasa.gov

NASA’s own history article on the accident, by John Uri of Johnson Space Center. Uses the past-tense wording in its title and throughout, and credits Swigert with the first call.
Apollo 13 Technical Air-to-Ground Voice Transcriptionntrs.nasa.gov

The primary artifact: NASA’s verbatim voice transcript on the NASA Technical Reports Server, whose record states “Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.”
Apollo 13 (film)en.wikiquote.org

Wikiquote’s sourced page for the film. Its note states that in real life the quote was “Houston, we’ve had a problem”, pronounced first by Swigert and repeated by Lovell, and altered to the present tense in the film script.
Houston, we have a problemen.wikipedia.org

The best single survey of the drift: the transcript block, Lovell’s 1975 recollection crediting Swigert, Broyles’s explanation of the tense change, the 1974 TV drama, NASA’s own 1983 radio-programme title, and the AFI ranking.
Apollo Expeditions to the Moon (NASA SP-350)ntrs.nasa.gov

The 1975 NASA volume edited by E. M. Cortright containing Lovell’s own chapter on Apollo 13. NTRS records it as a work of the US Government, public use permitted.

The man who actually called it in

Jack Swigert — the late addition who made the call

Jack Swigert

1931–1982 · NASA astronaut; command module pilot, Apollo 13

John L. “Jack” Swigert Jr. was not supposed to be aboard Apollo 13 at all. He flew on the backup crew until three days before launch, when he replaced Ken Mattingly — the prime crew had been exposed to German measles and Mattingly lacked immunity, so NASA declined to risk him. Three days into the flight, Swigert became the first human being to report the accident that crippled the spacecraft. He later left the astronaut corps and, on 2 November 1982, was elected to represent Colorado’s 6th congressional district with 64% of the vote; he died of respiratory failure on 27 December 1982, aged 51, after treatment for cancer, and never took his seat.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source

W. David Woods, Johannes Kemppanen, Alexander Turhanov, Lennox J. Waugh and William Smeaton, eds., “Day 3, part 2: ‘Houston, we’ve had a problem’,” Apollo 13 Flight Journal, 055:55:19–055:55:35 GET (corrected transcript). The contemporaneous Apollo 13 Technical Air-to-Ground Voice Transcription (Houston: NASA, 1970), NASA Technical Reports Server document 20160014370, logs the first call to the LMP and the CDR. The present-tense variant “Houston, we have a problem” originates in Apollo 13, directed by Ron Howard, screenplay by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert (Imagine Entertainment / Universal Pictures, 1995).

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Houston, we've had a problem’?” Last verified 27 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/houston-weve-had-a-problem/

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