Institute For The Future

Reaching for the Stars with Jose M. Hernandez

Serendipity seems to be a way of life at the Institute for the Future. On a flight back from visiting one of IFTF's Future for Good Fellows in Mexico City, our Executive Director, Marina Gorbis, turned to the passenger to her right and asked what seemed like a simple question. "What do you do?"

The passenger was Dr. Jose Hernandez (@Astro_Jose)—astronaut, congressional candidate, electrical engineer, businessman, and philanthropist. Jose told Marina of his current efforts to bring math and science education to underserved students through his foundation, Reaching for the Stars. Jose has written an autobiographical book of the same name (available in both Spanish and English).

The foundation strives to educate students and the local community about Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). For the past four years, it has run annual, hands-on science events that hundreds of students from the Stockton, California area have attended. It also awards scholarships to promising students.

With our programs on the future of learning, work, makers, and science, Jose is a natural friend of IFTF. Without hesitation, Marina invited Jose to join us for a day.

Jose and his Reaching for the Stars team spoke to a captive audience on Thursday, December 19th, wowing us with tales of growing up in a migrant farm worker family and never giving up on his dream to become an astronaut.

Jose was the first in his family to be born in the United States. His family would spend part of the year traveling up and down California as farm laborers, and the other back home in Mexico. Jose became the first American in his family because he was born during the summer farming season.

One day, when his family was readying to return to Mexico, he asked for six months of homework from his second grade teacher. She knew he would not achieve the education he deserved if his family continued this lifestyle. She insisted on visiting his parents and Jose, translating for his parents, explained in Spanish that he needed to stay in school. His parents were swayed and Jose began the education that would take him to the doctorate level.

At age 10, peeking at the tv while holding the antenna to get a clear picture, Jose saw the 1972 Apollo landing. He was mesmerized and inspired by the scene, vowing that he would become an astronaut someday. He never gave up on that dream, taking every job and every course he could that would look good on his NASA application.

At last, in 2009, after more than 10 years of applying to NASA and years more of training, he went to space. He played a video of the mission and the work performed to take supplies to Russian astronauts at the International Space Station. 

Obama urged him to run for Congress, which he did in 2011, just a few votes short of a win. It was the second most expensive congressional race that year.

Jose is now pushing forward Reaching for the Stars (as well as his own consultancy, Pt Enterprises) and is looking for funding from foundations.