phrase
Houston, We Have a Problem
The canonical way to announce, usually half-jokingly, that something has gone wrong.
Origin
During the Apollo 13 mission in April 1970, astronaut Jack Swigert radioed mission control after an oxygen tank exploded: 'Houston, we've had a problem here.' Ron Howard's 1995 film Apollo 13, with Tom Hanks as commander Jim Lovell, tightened the line to the present tense — 'Houston, we have a problem' — and that's the version that stuck. The real mission improvised its way back to Earth and became NASA's most famous successful failure.
Modern usage
The universal phrase for flagging trouble in incident channels, slides, group chats, and stand-ups. Almost always slightly comic; rarely deployed for an actually grave situation.
In the wild
Houston, we have a problem — the staging deploy is rolling back.— engineering Slack
Tags
trouble
nasa
announcement