I’m of a generation where we’ve always grown up with the shuttle. I remember sitting in a fourth grade class room when Challenger exploded and the profound effect it had one me and my classmates. The continued successful missions even after the Columbia disaster, showcase the human spirit to strive and to succeed in the face of adversity. Now, the final shuttle has launched and many of us acutely feel the pain of its final mission. To think that it will be a while before we reach for the stars again as a human race makes us think of our own dreams, stalled, or even taken off the table, a program that has come to an end.

But we need to remember that like the space program, our dreams do not need to come to an end. While the shuttle will not be going into space, there are additional programs, some privately funded, others through various governments, to continue to go to the International Space Station and explore the worlds beyond our own. This is a transition in our reach for the stars, a movement of funding, and of efforts, but no less fervent and no less hopeful.

We should remember that there are times when our dreams seem to stall. They might have setbacks. Their focus might change, and sometimes, the entire shape and form of them will change, too. That’s okay. It’s a perfectly natural part of the process.

We shouldn’t be afraid to dream, to reach for something that seems to be so far above us, so distant from where we are now. One of the authors whose work I greatly enjoy, Marc Allen, often quotes Henry David Thoreau who said: “If you have built castles in the sky Let not your dreams go to waste; Just build the foundations under them.”

It makes sense. And it’s an inspiring quote.

Though the space shuttle will be in a museum instead of the launch pad, I’m sure the space program will go on. So, too, with our dreams. They may be transforming, taking shape and form beyond any that we’d initially imagined. But they are still there, and once we have the foundations built, we’ll find our castle is exactly as it was meant to be.

Keep dreaming! And keep looking up!