>>Florida once again provide the launch pad for the next crew in space, and aboar Crew 13 is pilot Luke Delaney, who considers Central Florida his home.

>>I mean, operating in space is enough to be just excited alone, but the fact that we might get to operate inside a spaceship and then also do spacewalks on the outside, I think that those dynamic activities are what appealed to me.

>>It is just so exciting to be here in such a special, historic place and then be able to to start our journey to the International Space Station.

>>I think looking down at Earth when I'm outside kind of working on a spaceship, yeah, it's hard to fathom actually.

>>We've been training togethe as a crew for over a year now, so it is being the culmination of all of that, that work and effort.

And we're so grateful to the teams of experts around the world that have gotten us prepared and ready for this.

>>Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

Ignition and liftoff.

Go, Falcon.

Go, Dragon and Go Crew 13.

>>It definitely puts things in perspective for me when I think about all the human and physiological aspects.

Everybody's different.

Everybody's body's different.

We're still tryin to characterize a lot of things, but yeah, it presses upon me really heavily in term of what we're doing on station and just how meaningful it is for what we're going to do beyond low Earth orbit.

Huge step.

And it's hugely important for what we're going to be doing in the years to come.

>>When you talk about being grateful for everything that we have, I mean, we the crew, we feel like some of the luckiest people in the world.

>>We stand on the shoulders of giants.

And we wouldn't be here withou the incredible history of folks who have come through this place to launch into space and push the bounds of what humans are capable of.

We are honored to be a small part of that legacy.

>>For more stories exploring Central Florida's connectio to space, go to wucf.org/Space.