It’s fair to assume that no one makes a more interesting morning entrance onto the UCF campus than UCF’s new “space czar”, Greg Autry. The associate provost for space commercialization and strategy rides into work on a skateboard, barely within the posted speed limit. He wears a suit, a tie, and a determined expression that says he’s going somewhere important and you might want to follow him.

“I get odd glances,” Autry says, “but I’m usually going so fast that I have no idea what anyone is thinking.”

Autry’s skateboard is also an inescapable analogy. It’s made from upcycled scrap carbon fiber from space companies like SpaceX and Virgin Galactic. Autry brought his board with him to UCF’s College of Business from the west coast earlier in 2024 to start a space commercialization program and to begin a university-wide effort to bolster the SpaceU brand.

“We currently have a logo and a football game [that help] bring awareness to [UCF’s identity] of SpaceU,” Autry says. “[We want to make it more well known this is the place to be] because we already have world-class researchers, direct connections to the space industry and this unique location. I want students to come to UCF knowing they can participate in an industry that’s about to take off, no matter what field they’re interested in. This is the place to be.”

As Florida’s premier engineering and technology university, UCF was founded in 1963 to fuel the nearby space industry. Faculty and researchers across the university contribute to NASA missions such as OSIRIS-Rex and New Horizons, as well as the Artemis program. UCF is home to the Exolith Lab, where asteroid, Martian and lunar regolith simulants are created for space researchers worldwide, and the world’s largest lunar regolith test bin is located. UCF alums make up nearly 29% of Kennedy Space Center (KSC) employees, with their expertise ranking from engineering to physics and marketing. Future Knights at KSC may include experts in space medicine, as UCF is developing a new program dedicated to the field, as well as another industry Autry is helping shape curriculum for.

Autry’s enthusiasm is based on a vision for the future merging with present-day reality. Prior to UCF, he launched the world’s first space leadership, business and policy program at Arizona State University’s globally recognized Thunderbird School. As much as he enjoyed leading the progress and his life out west, Autry could not pass up the opportunity to launch a second business program around space at a university near the Space Coast, where a graduate program beginning in the Fall of 2025 and an undergraduate program to follow are already poised to lead the way into an all-new realm.

“I’m confident it won’t take us long to reach our lofty goals,” Autry says. “We’re taking the Elon Musk approach: grow it quickly and innovate relentlessly to stay ahead of everyone else. We can do that at UCF because we have a huge competitive advantage — geographically and with so much local demand in the space business. I’ve been passionate about space my entire life, so this is a remarkable time for me, personally and professionally.”

Like so many kids who watched the first Apollo moon landings, Autry dreamed about life in space. Those thoughts never vanished.

“The missions to the moon were life changing for me at a young age,” he says. “Watching and reading about space became my escape.”

On Sept. 8, 1974, Autry stood at the Snake River Canyon in Idaho to watch Evel Knievel attempt to clear the quarter-mile-wide chasm in a specially designed Skycycle. Despite the failed jump, Knievel became a hero to Autry for his willingness to take flight in the closest thing to a personal rocket he’d ever seen. At the University of California, Irvine and then University of Southern California, Autry studied the commercial space industry before any other management scholar had recognized its significance. He spent several years teaching a summer course in space entrepreneurship for Florida Tech. While teaching at Arizona State, he would bring students to visit Cape Canaveral and Kennedy Space Center where they could see the growing Florida commercial space businesses up close. Autry also visited the area during his tenure as NASA’s White House Liaison and while serving on the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Board at the FAA. The East Coast vantage point continually rekindled his passion for space launch.

“When I heard UCF was serious about doing something amazing in space commercialization and taking SpaceU to another level, it meant the university’s vision aligned with my own,” Autry says. “I wanted to be part of the action. This is a rare opportunity to participate in something transformational and to influence a new generation of space leaders.”

Now that he lives in Florida, Autry can take breaks from his work to watch rocket launches from his dock in Melbourne. He views these frequent events with the same awe he’s had since the first moon landings, only now he also carries a unique business perspective. Usually, he knows someone who has a payload or an investment on board.

“If you’re in Central Florida, space is business. Everyone should be excited about it. The space industry creates tens of thousands of jobs and a commercial economy worth billions of dollars. Missions are often about communications, but they also drive crop yields for agriculture, management of fisheries, the monitoring of oil reserves and real estate, manufacturing, robotics, efficient transportation of goods and products … we could go on and on.”

As space travel expands and becomes less exclusive to the wealthiest demographic, it will require more people to be educated and trained in space-specific medicine, business, psychology, science, engineering, even hospitality for cities with launch sites around the world.

“It won’t be long before careers are available for anyone like me who always wanted to be involved in space but couldn’t get into an astronaut program,” Autry says. “This is where the preparation will happen, at UCF, to enter an industry with unlimited potential.”

Autry is among those who believe space will produce the world’s first trillionaire. Several global financial services project the space economy alone will generate $3 trillion in revenues by 2050. Autry thinks those numbers are probably too conservative.

“The growth in space won’t follow a typical linear curve,” he says. “It’s reasonable that in the next 15 to 20 years the space economy will exceed the entire U.S. economy. Keep in mind, our first space race was driven by the government during the Cold War. This second space race is inspired by private enterprise. This is entirely different from anything we’ve seen. And UCF — SpaceU — is literally right in the middle of it. That’s why I’m so enthusiastic to be here on the front end, and I’m encouraging everyone to join us for the ride.”