Why UCF Is a Leader for the Next Space Economy

Landing humans on the moon was just a dream when UCF was founded in 1963. But we dared to believe - developing the talent and inventing the technologies to make it reality. That same spirit still drives us today.

We are America's Space University. And we celebrate UCF Space Week to honor our origin as we dare to build what's next.

More than 60 years ago, UCF was created to provide the talent needed to support the United States' growing space program at Cape Canaveral.

We were Florida Technological University then. NASA and the federal government were at the center of the space industry, and the challenge was largely scientific and engineering-focused: build the technology, develop the workforce and get people and machines into space.

Today, we continue to reach for the stars. You need to look no further than our ranking as the No. 1 provider of talent to the aerospace and defense industries (according to Aviation Week). But the space industry is changing.

Drive to the Space Coast today and you will find that SpaceX now operates Launch Pad 39A. Blue Origin has a major manufacturing facility at Exploration Park while Amazon Leo has a satellite processing facility. These are just a few of a growing collection of private businesses building rockets, satellites, infrastructure and entirely new markets around space.

That evolution creates a new challenge for America's Space University. The commercial space economy will certainly continue to need great scientists and engineers. But it will also need people who understand how to finance companies, allocate capital, manage organizations, develop markets, navigate risk, build supply chains and turn extraordinary technologies into sustainable businesses.

That is why the Barry S. Miller College of Business is so committed to UCF Space Week.

Last year, we helped bring The Economist's Space Economy Summit to UCF as one of the anchors of Space Week. This October, the summit returns to campus, bringing together leaders from industry, government and investment to examine an increasingly important proposition: Space is becoming everybody's business.

Our contribution to that conversation is deliberately a business one. This year, for example, our faculty will examine what a SpaceX IPO could mean for space commercialization. The interesting questions extend well beyond what the stock might be worth. How does becoming a public company change SpaceX? What might its valuation do to the flow of venture capital into other space businesses? Does greater access to public capital accelerate the development of an entire commercial ecosystem?

Those are business-school questions. Increasingly, they are also space-industry questions.

We have made the same bet with our space MBA. The program prepares professionals to lead organizations operating in the emerging space economy, combining the traditional disciplines of business with specialized work in space finance, entrepreneurship, strategy, policy and leadership.

And our ambition reaches beyond graduate education.

Several years ago, one of our student ambassadors, Harper Cheyenne '21, was studying finance, marketing and astrophysics at UCF. She wanted to work in the space industry and become an astronaut. Today, she works for NASA as a test director, having worked previously as a systems engineer for Kennedy Propellants and Life Support Services. She's proudly known as our "Rocket Girl."

Harper's story is a reminder that UCF has always been at its best when it prepares people not simply for the economy that exists, but for the one that is emerging.

That is what Space Week is about for us. UCF helped build the first space economy. Now we intend to help lead the next one.

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