DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — The launch of humans from American soil again will be a crowning achievement for not just SpaceX, but for the commercial space industry in general.

The rise of SpaceX is inspiring a new generation to reach for the stars.

"SpaceX was a big inspiration for me in high school," said Nick Lopac, an Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University student enrolled in the school's spaceflight operations program.

Lopac tries to make it to every launch from the company, including Saturday's Crew Dragon.

"They're doing a lot of innovative stuff, and I'd love to be a part of their team, maybe one day," Lopac says.

Daniel Byrnes became fascinated with SpaceX from more than 5,000 miles away in Naples, Italy, where his family lived during his high school days.

"SpaceX drove me to this university, Embry-Riddle," said Byrnes, who is also in the spaceflight operations program at the Daytona Beach university. "It would be midnight, and I'd be cheering from my room. My parents would be like, 'What are you doing?' and I’d be watching the live streams of the launches," he said.

"There's so much opportunity that'll be expanding in the next couple of years, decades even, and it seems like an untapped source of rapidly reusable technology that will make space more accessible for everybody," Byrnes said.

ERAU professor Erik Seedhouse says from launching small satellites to sending tourists into orbit, there is a demand.

"There's lots of opportunities. Twenty years ago, there was just one opportunity — it was NASA or nothing," Seedhouse said.

The Daytona Beach school had just a handful of students in the program five years ago. Now, 120 students want to be a part of the space industry, and the university says that number is growing.

"If you're a student here, the sky is the limit," Seedhouse says.

Students who have graduated from Embry-Riddle have gone on to work for SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other commercial aerospace companies.