"People often say I became an astronaut despite being from a family of migrant farmworkers. I correct them: it’s not despite, it’s because."
"I want to be like that guy. I want to be an astronaut."
This last sentence, spoken to himself by a ten-year-old migrant farmworker's son watching the Apollo 17 moonwalk on a black-and-white TV in 1972, is the diagnostic ILE-accent moment in an otherwise cleanly LSE life. The LSE base accounts for the disciplined work ethic, the applied-engineering career delivering practical welfare benefits, the family and civic life, and the steady character that did not give up after rejection. The ILE accent accounts for the sudden visionary aspiration in the first place.
Hernández' father had a third-grade education. The family spent nine months of the year on what he calls "the California circuit" — Mexico in winter, southern California in spring, working their way north through the fields. He and his three siblings worked alongside their parents. He did not learn English until he was twelve. His teacher, noticing his bright mind, persuaded his parents to settle in Stockton.
The Apollo 17 moment came when he was ten, in the middle of this circuit. He watched Eugene Cernan walk on the moon, occasionally running outside to look at the actual full moon, and then back to look at the TV. It was then and there that he would become an astronaut. He told his father that night. His father, instead of dismissing the absurd ambition, replied:
"I think you can do it, m'ijo. But if you really want to do this, you need to follow my recipe for success."
A "pure" LSE child watching the Apollo 17 broadcast in 1972 would more likely have thought something more practical, like "that's impressive work" or "I should study hard so I can have a good career". Hernández took the visionary leap: I will be that. The leap does suggest a certain Ne accent in him beyond the usual LSE standard, a capacity for imaginative identification across the gap of evident impossibility. Later, in a National Geographic interview, he described it as "a spiritual pull".
His father's recipe, which Hernández has retold in nearly every public speech he has given for twenty years, is the following five steps, with Hernández himself eventually adding a sixth:
Define your goal.
Recognize how far you are from it.
Draw a roadmap to get there.
Prepare and educate yourself for the challenge.
Develop a work ethic second to none — always give more than expected.
(Hernández's addition) Persist.
The content here is about preparation and work ethic rather than LIE-ish strategic positioning and opportunity recognition. The fact that it came from a third-grade-educated migrant farmworker father who never imagined NASA is consistent with this: LSE wisdom is the kind of practical-disciplinary wisdom that travels well across class, taught through example and proverb rather than through formal management literature.
The LSE base shows itself in how Hernández actually followed this advice. After studying electrical engineering in college, he went to work at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory projects that were both interesting from a technical point of view and useful practically. One of the most important things he did there was help create the first full-field digital mammography system for finding breast cancer early. This is quite LSE-style engineering: methodical applied technical work delivering measurable welfare benefits through patient sustained labor. It's not by accident that LSE is the most "caretaking" of all logical types.
Hernández applied to NASA's astronaut program eleven times across approximately fifteen years and was rejected each time, showing the LSE "Workaholic No. 1" and "apply more efforts in the same direction" traits. On the twelfth application in 2004, when he was 41 years old, NASA accepted him into the 19th astronaut class.
He served as a specialist on STS-128 aboard Space Shuttle Discovery in August 2009, a fourteen-day mission to the International Space Station transferring seven tons of equipment and supplies. The role involved operating the robotic arm and supporting the cargo transfer — technical work requiring ability to see immediate dangers right away, and disciplined execution under demanding conditions with no room for error. This is the type strength, and Hernández executed the mission cleanly. The distinctive personal touch was that he became the first astronaut to tweet from space in Spanish.
"Imposter syndrome happens at all levels. When that happens, take a safety time out. Focus on your past accomplishments. Convince yourself that you belong. Throw that imposter syndrome out the window and believe in yourself."
The post-NASA trajectory shows the LSE base extending into multiple domains with the ILE accent supplying the willingness to engage heterogeneous projects. He ran for Congress in California's 10th district in 2012 (Democratic candidate, narrowly defeated), founded a winery where he is personally invoved with winemaking rather than just being a passive investor. "When I retired and came back to California, I wanted to get back on a tractor", he explained. He has five children.
"It doesn't matter where you start, it's where you end up."
This line of his is recognizably LSE wisdom — the outcome is a result of sustained work. He certainly has earned the right to say it. The ILE accent gave him a goal sufficiently improbable to require thirty-one years of methodical preparation in the first place. In general, having both strongvalued Te and strongvalued Ne is a relatively rare case (the benefit ILE-LSE pair is usually quite distant in its members' place on the N-S dichotomy), but, as I have seen when writing this description, quite an attractive one.
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