The only problem the Houston Astros have at the moment—after their come-from-behind win last night in the World Series—is a clichéd misquote.
That is, “Houston, we have a problem.”
Houstonians have been begging the media (and everyone who will listen, including the Wall Street Journal) to stop using the hackneyed phrase, which is actually a misquote of a 1970 communication between Apollo 13 and mission control in Houston. (The actual quote, if you’re wondering, is the much less sexy, “OK, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”)
Even Houston native William Broyles, who co-wrote the screenplay for popular 1995 movie, Apollo 13, starring Tom Hanks—who delivered the much sexier misquote on the silver screen—is a little apologetic. “It just sounded like it came off the tongue more easily,” he told the Journal. “We had no idea it would become such a trope for everything.”
NASA, on the other hand, isn’t crying the blues, because the phrase is clearly free marketing for them. “We think of it as one of our finest hours here,” Kelly O. Humphries, news chief at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, told the Journal. In fact, they just named their new podcast, Houston We Have a Podcast.
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