Group 5 (1966)
Jack Swigert
Last-minute Apollo 13 crew member who radioed ‘Houston, we’ve had a problem.’
Jack Swigert joined the Apollo 13 crew just 72 hours before launch, replacing Ken Mattingly over a measles exposure. Days later it was Swigert who reported the oxygen tank explosion with the understated call: ‘Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.’
A former Air National Guard fighter pilot and one of the few bachelor astronauts, Swigert was elected to Congress from Colorado in 1982 but died of cancer before taking office. A statue of him stands in the U.S. Capitol.