It is not just about every working day you get to satisfy an astronaut — permit alone a person with a element movie built about his amazing life.
For students at Animo Legacy Charter Middle University in South Los Angeles, they had the prospect Wednesday to meet up with and hear to Dr. Jose Hernandez, the farm employee turned NASA astronaut whose tale is an inspiration to quite a few.
“I instructed the young children when I initially walked in, I mentioned, ‘I see a large amount of me in them,’ you know? When I was their age,” Hernandez claimed.
Hernandez gifted copies of his autobiography, “From Farmworker to Astronaut,” to dozens of learners, courtesy of Gordon Philanthropies. The book tells his accurate-everyday living story of escalating up as the son of migrant farmworkers, who spent 9 months of the yr buying crops across California and residing 3 months in Mexico. He, himself, also worked in the fields as a younger boy.
Though watching the ultimate Apollo Moon mission, Hernandez understood he desired to grow up to turn out to be an astronaut. It was a dream that seemed unlikely for the Stockton indigenous, but one that his mother and father often pushed him to accomplish.
“I was keeping the bunny ears to strengthen reception, seeing the astronaut wander on the moon when I explained, ‘That’s what I wanna be. I wanna be an astronaut,’” he reported.
Soon after finding out at the College of Pacific and the College of California Santa Barbara, Hernandez started his job at NASA. At first, he was turned down from the astronaut application no a lot less than 11 situations but he was tenacious and continued to implement. Inevitably, the California indigenous acquired a location on the Place Shuttle Discovery in 2009, generating a approximately 14-day excursion to the Intercontinental Place Station.
While in orbit, he despatched the 1st Spanish tweet from room and was part of the initial-ever crew that featured two Latinos. Although he admits his favored component of touring to place was dwelling in zero gravity, he explained viewing the Earth from the exterior gave him fantastic point of view.
“What struck me as so stunning, so you could not convey to where by a person place ended and a further commenced. And I explained, ‘My gosh, I had to go out of this entire world to realize that borders are human-made principles developed to independent us,’” he claimed. “We’re just one particular race — the human race — and I wish globe leaders would get this second of reflection simply because I assurance you, our globe wouldn’t be obtaining the difficulties we have nowadays.”
Now, Hernandez operates on a farm as soon as once more, though this time all over, he’s the owner.
“There’s a expressing, ‘You can acquire the kid out of the farm, but not the farm out of the child,’” he explained. “I nevertheless pick grapes, but they’re my grapes.”
And he would like learners of all backgrounds to are living out their wildest dreams, no issue how out of arrive at they may perhaps seem to be.
“You know, what ever they want to develop into,” Hernandez said. “It will not have to be an astronaut, but they want to shoot for the stars and shoot significant.”
