"Houston, we have a problem." So said the calm voice crackling through the speaker. This is perhaps the most misquoted quote from the heyday of the U.S. space program. Almost exactly forty years ago, first John Swigert, Jr. and then, after Houston Control asked the crew of Apollo 13 to repeat what Swigert just said, James Lovell actually used the phrase "Houston, we've had a problem." The use of the past perfect progressive tense only emphasize the heroic dispassion expressed by the astronauts who faced death in the solitude of space. One would suppose if they were really worried, Fred Haise Jr., the third member of the crew, might have also chimed in.

Ironically, while the "have had" construction implied the problem had occurred sometime in the past (implying it was now solved), the reality was the boys on Apollo 13 really did have a current problem. Lovell referred to a past problem – the failure of the electrical system on the B oxygen tank. What he may not have known at the time was that the past problem was caused by an explosion in the service module. This disabled the craft, making their mission unattainable and jeopardizing their very lives. Sounds like they have a problem to me.

I remember sitting in Miss Powell's fourth grade class praying for the astronauts and, although we didn't know it at the time, we were using elementary trigonometric calculations to determine what angle of entry would be too much (making them burn up in the atmosphere), too little (making them bounce off the upper atmosphere, forever losing them into unreachable deep space) or just right. If you haven't guessed it. Miss Powell was a bit of a renegade as a teacher. The youngest of three sisters, she remained unmarried all her live, didn't think the Supreme Court had the authority to tell people they couldn't pray wherever they wanted to and believed ten year olds could readily grasp high school mathematics (if only they were taught properly, and, believe me, she could do it).