A young boy, the son of migrant farmers from Mexico, watches the Apollo 11 moon landing on a rickety living room TV set, riveted. The same young boy, now a young man, applies to Nasa’s astronaut selection program 11 times, year after year, without success. The young man, now middle-aged, finally makes it to the Kennedy Space Center, only to train several more years for even a shot at exiting Earth.
A Million Miles Away, the Amazon biopic of the astronaut José Hernández, has all the ingredients of an inspiring, sanded-down success story: Hernández, played capably by Michael Peña, went from itinerant student to barrier-breaking electrical engineer to the International Space Station, the first migrant farm worker to go to space. It hits the usual beats of space heroism – the ambition of a gravity-defying dream, the vaunted heroism of the space program, the sacrifices in the name of science and patriotism – with chapters delineated by “ingredients to success” in life, first outlined by his father, in line with Hernández’s later career as a motivational speaker.
