Houston We Have A Problem Movie Quote: The film Apollo 13 was released in cinemas throughout the United States on June 30, 1995. Ron Howard directed this epic picture about the almost catastrophic Apollo 13 lunar mission in April 1970, which was based on a script by William Broyles Jr. and Al Reinert. The film is set in the year 1970.
It didn’t take long for two words from the film to become well-known quotes: “Houston, we have a problem” and “Failure is not an option.” Howard and the scriptwriters worked hard to make the film as factual and accurate as possible. And it is, at least in terms of a Hollywood film.
However, the sentence “Houston, we have a problem,” which was also used as the slogan for the movie’s poster, is a misquote of what was really uttered in the movie. Furthermore, the phrase “Failure is not an option” was coined by Broyles.
Astronauts from the United States planned to land on the moon for the third time with Apollo 13. The first was the Apollo 11 mission, which took place in 1969.
When astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the lunar surface during that trip, he spoke the famous words that have been recounted over and over again: “That’s one tiny step for man, one big leap for humanity.”
Armstrong has long maintained that he really stated “That’s one little step for a man…” and that the word “a” was accidentally lost in the transmission process. Armstrong may have been correct, according to a high-tech computer examination of the tape performed decades later.
If the Apollo 13 mission had been successful in its aim to land on the moon, the commander of the mission, James A. Lovell, may have said something just as noteworthy about it.
Unfortunately, when Apollo 13 neared the moon on April 13, 1970, an oxygen tank onboard the spacecraft burst, killing all seven astronauts aboard.
After the explosion, Lovell, represented by Tom Hanks, communicates with the Mission Control team at the NASA Space Center in Houston, saying, “Houston, we have a problem.”
Apollo 13 crewmember John L. “Jack” Swigert made the following statement after the explosion happened, according to official NASA recordings: “Okay, Houston, we’ve got a problem here.”
“This is Houston,” said astronaut Charlie Duke, who was working in the Control Center on that particular day: “This is Houston.” “Please say it again.”
Although Swigert (played by Kevin Bacon) is not seen to be the one who says the phrase initially, the words said by Hanks are quite similar to what Lovell really says in the film.
After the film became a tremendous success, the phrase “Houston, we have a problem” quickly gained popularity as an idiomatic statement that may be used to denote any form of trouble.
While the movie’s opening lines are loosely based on historical events, the phrase “Failure is not an option” was never stated by anybody during the stressful four days it took to successfully return the Apollo 13 Command Module and its crew to the planet Earth.
The lines “Chief Flight Director Gene Krantz” were said by Ed Harris, who portrayed NASA’s Chief Flight Director Gene Krantz in the film.
They undoubtedly represent the unwavering, unyielding commitment, and relentless efforts of Krantz and the rest of the Houston Mission Control crew in order to safely return the Apollo 13 astronauts to the United States. Moreover, Kranz used the statement as the title of his autobiographical biography once it became popular as a result of the film.
However, it is a fictitious quotation created by playwright Broyles.
When asked about the phrase’s origins in a subsequent interview, Apollo 13 Flight Dynamics Officer Jerry Bostick shared his recollection of the incident.
