Posted by “I want to be like that guy. I want to be an astronaut.”
José M. Hernández remembers saying those words to himself at age 10 after watching Gene Cernan walk on the moon during the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. It was highly unlikely that dream would come true for any child, much less one whose parents were migrant farmworkers from Mexico who spent most of the year doing the exhausting, backbreaking job of picking fruits and vegetables in California.
However, with guidance from his father, the support of his family, and an unwavering commitment to faith and hard work, José eventually achieved his goal, becoming an astronaut on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 2009. His story was recently turned into the Amazon Prime Video movie, “A Million Miles Away,” which earned a Christopher Award earlier this year. José joined me on “Christopher Closeup” (podcast below) to discuss his journey to the stars.
Out of economic necessity, José’s father began migrating to California for nine months of the year, beginning at age 15. “He would follow the harvest,” José explained, “three different stops: southern, central, northern California, for nine months, and then go back home.”
When he got married and had kids (two born in Mexico, two born in the U.S., including José), the trips became a family affair. And when the children got old enough, they had to both work in the fields and attend school.
José’s parents were determined to give their children a good education, despite not getting past the third grade themselves. They wanted the next generation to build a life beyond migrant farm work. So, when the Hernandezes returned to Mexico for three months each year, they would have their children’s teachers give them all their schoolwork so they would not fall behind on lessons. José recalled his mother using positive reinforcement to get them to study. Once José was in high school, the family chose to settle in Stockton, California, to give the children a more stable life.
When José’s father came home from work on the evening of the Apollo 17 mission, the boy told him about his dream of becoming an astronaut. And despite being a man whose work was grounded on this earth, José’s dad did not discourage him.
José recalled, “My parents…were wise beyond their years. I’m very convinced that had they [gone] to college, they would’ve been world-renowned psychologists because they were master motivators…I think [my father] saw the determination of a 10-year-old kid. He did two important things. He empowered me. He validated that dream by saying, ‘I think you can do it’ – as opposed to saying, ‘This is too far of a stretch for you. Select something else.’…Then he said, ‘If you really want to reach this [goal], let’s follow these five simple steps…[First], determine your purpose in life. What does José want to be when he grows up? Second, recognize how far you are [from your goal]. Third, draw yourself a roadmap so you know how to get there. Fourth, prepare yourself according to the challenge you picked. And fifth, develop a work ethic second to none, [using the] same effort you put [into] picking fruits and vegetables, Saturdays and Sundays, seven days a week during the summer…You put that effort there. And when you graduate college, you put it in your job. That’s the recipe to succeed.’ I never forgot that, and I still live by those steps.”
José also notes that his Catholic faith has long served as a guiding force in his life, calling it “my refuge. When you start college and you’re struggling, I found myself at the church praying. Anytime there’s a challenge, I always found comfort in that…I’m also of the belief that you can’t only go and take a dip in the well when you need it. You’ve got to make sure that you’re there all the time and helping others as well. This is why I go to church every Sunday with my wife…I took a lot of religious relics, these crosses for all my kids, I took them to space with me…So, yeah, faith plays a big part for me.”
José needed all the faith he could muster in his journey to becoming an astronaut. NASA rejected his application 11 times before finally accepting it on his 12th attempt. He divides his rejections – and the mindset with which he dealt with the disappointments – into two categories.
“Typically, someone gives up after two or three rejections,” José said. “But I had the tenacity of going all the way to six times, and my reasoning was very simple. The mere fact that I wanted to be an astronaut motivated me to go to college, motivated me to go to graduate school, motivated me to work in a world premier research facility…Yes, I got rejected. Yes, it didn’t feel good. But in the end, I looked at the cup as half-full. I would say, ‘What’s the worst that could happen if I never get selected? I got this great job at a national laboratory as a research scientist engineer. A far cry from picking cucumbers at 50 cents a bucket. The consolation prize is not that bad, right?’ So, that’s what convinced me the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth time.”
José had always found comfort in the fact that his rejection letters invited him to apply again. He even framed his first rejection letter and hung it on his wall. But after being turned down for a sixth time, he lost hope. He crumpled up the letter and threw it into the garbage can in his home. Well, he tried to throw it in the garbage can. Thankfully, he was a poor shot, and the letter wound up on the floor where his wife, Adela, found it and read it.
“I think that was God’s divine intervention that I missed the garbage can,” José recalled. “[Adela is] a smart lady. She knew, this guy’s giving up. She confronted me with this letter….I tell her my sob story. There was no comfort. There was nothing but tough love because she looked at me and said, ‘So, you’re a quitter.’ And man, that stung.”
José protested that he wasn’t a quitter because he had already applied so many times. Adela responded that she knew him well enough to predict that if he gave up now, he would become a “bitter old man,” always wondering what might have been. As she walked away, Adela said, “I don’t know what [the other applicants] have that you don’t have.”
“That’s when it clicked,” José explained. “That’s when I developed a three element strategy to reaching a goal. The first one…When you have a goal, you always say, ‘What are the minimum requirements to get there?’ I was doing it. I went to school, graduated in STEM. I went to graduate school. I was working in a premier research facility related to space. But then the second element is the exact question she asked: ‘What do they have that you don’t have?’ I had never taken the time to compare myself with the people that were being selected…The third element is, differentiate yourself from the competition.”
José discovered that those in the astronaut program were pilots and scuba dive rated, so he acquired those skills. And to differentiate himself, he signed up for a nuclear nonproliferation project which would convert Russian nuclear material for peaceful purposes. It involved traveling to Siberia several times a year, for three to four weeks at a time. But since he had read that the U.S. and Russia were building an International Space Station together, he thought it would be a worthwhile pursuit.
“Sometimes, we have to do things we don’t like in the short term to reach the end game,” José said, “and that’s what I decided to do. Lo and behold, on my 12th try, I got selected.”
José is grateful for all the people who helped him along the way. In fact, when he read the first draft of the script for “A Million Miles Away,” which was based on his book “Reaching for the Stars,” he said it was centered too much on him, so the writer made revisions. “We have to give the people their due, the folks that were involved in my life,” he said. “I didn’t get here by myself. I got here through a lot of help from my parents, from the community, from my wife – and through the grace of God, I was able to finally get selected.”
In “A Million Miles Away,” José’s friend and mentor at NASA, Kalpana Chawla, says that looking at the earth from space, “it’s as though the whole place is sacred.” As a man of faith, José felt a similar sentiment when it was his time to travel to the stars.
He said, “When you first look at the planet, you unbuckle your seatbelt, and you’re floating for the very first time. You’re experiencing zero gravity. Then, you make your way to the window that faces the Earth, and you see the Earth from the outside for the first time. Less than 600 people out of a planet of seven billion people have had that privilege of seeing our Earth from the exterior. Then, you go to the opposite window, and you see the universe. You realize, in the grand scheme of this universe, how can this be? This is too perfect to be a coincidence, that everything is in its place and that we’re just one of billions and billions of planets around this grand universe that God created. I said, ‘This is too precise, too exact to be a coincidence. There has to be a higher spirit, higher being that created all of this.’ So, it only solidified my faith in my religion.”
In conclusion, José wants viewers of “A Million Miles Away” to enjoy his compelling and entertaining life story, while also deriving the positive message it shares: “My hope is that it becomes a process of empowerment for them. My hope is that many of the viewers are going to see it, and they’re going to say, ‘Jose started off in a worse situation than what I currently find myself in. Yet he was able to achieve his dream of becoming an astronaut. If he was able to do it, why can’t I?'”
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