Dreaming about
space

Space is the one place where there's nothing at all, no air, no sound, no up or down (the explosions in films would be silent if they were real). Dreaming about space usually points to the unknown, a new path you're exploring or a problem you've never met before, or to a need for room and distance from everyday life, and alone out there it can be about feeling cut off.

How you moved through space matters most. Floating weightless and calm is a very different dream from watching your ship drift away, and steering a rocket toward a new world is different from both. Think about where you've wanted more room lately, and where you've felt alone.

What dreaming about space means

We use the word for distance between people as much as for the universe. You give someone space, ask for space after an argument, or space out in a boring meeting. Dreams use both meanings at once.

The unknown

Space is the edge of everything we know, and a space dream often comes when you're facing something new, like a first job, a new country or becoming a parent. Excitement in the dream suggests you're ready for it, and fear that you feel you're going in without a map.

Needing room

Sometimes a space dream is about wanting more space in the everyday sense. When life is crowded, with a full house, a demanding job or someone who's always around, the mind can go to the emptiest place it can imagine. If the silence felt good, ask where you could find a little of that while awake.

Being cut off

Space is also loneliness at its most extreme. An astronaut alone in a capsule, or a voice on a radio that stops answering, is a strong picture of feeling unreachable. These dreams often come when you've changed cities, lost someone, or spent weeks feeling misunderstood.

Dreaming about floating in space

Floating weightless among the stars is the most common space dream, and it's close to the flying dreams that nearly half the students in one large survey remembered having.^[1] When it's peaceful, it's usually about relief, a burden lifted or a problem you've finally stopped carrying. When it's frightening, with no handhold and nothing to push against, it can be about feeling without support right now. It's worth noticing whether you were tethered to anything, because a line back to a ship often stands for the person or routine that keeps you safe.

Dreaming about being lost in space

Drifting away from your ship, losing radio contact, or not knowing which way is home is the lonely version. It usually comes when you feel cut off from the people or the routines that ground you, or when you're facing something so unfamiliar that you don't know where to begin. Who were you trying to reach? That's often the person you've been missing.

Dreaming about being an astronaut

Being an astronaut is about exploring with a mission. It tends to come when you're taking on something ambitious, a big project, a career leap, a step nobody in your family has taken. Astronauts train for years, so the dream can also be about wanting to feel ready. If the launch went well, it's usually encouraging. If something went wrong, think about what you're nervous could fail.

Dreaming about not being able to breathe in space

A cracked helmet, an air supply running low, or a door to the vacuum opening is the panic version of a space dream. It's often about pressure you feel can't go on much longer, at work or in a relationship that's using up all your air. If these dreams wake you breathless, a blocked nose or a stuffy room can find its way into a dream too.

Space in lucid dreams

Flying up and out into space is one of the favorite goals of lucid dreamers, people who know they're dreaming while it's happening. If you'd like to try, it's on most lists of things to do in a lucid dream, along with flying and meeting people from your past.

Dreaming about space according to Jung and Freud

Space wasn't a subject for either man, so the leaps from their ideas to the stars below are ours.

Jung: the spacesuit as a persona

The part you play in other people's lives gets a mask in Jung's scheme, the persona, and its usual pictures are clothes, masks and uniforms.^[2] A spacesuit is a uniform with one job, keeping you alive where you couldn't otherwise exist, and read through his idea a cracked helmet or a failing air supply is a role that has stopped being enough for where you are now, one that held up fine on the ground. The tether is the line back to who you are when nobody is watching.

Freud: weightlessness and the rocket

Flying is on Freud's list of typical dreams, with a discussion of its own,^[3] and floating weightless is a near relative, so ask what you were let off from and which wish got through. He'd have looked at the day before too, a launch on the news or a night spent looking up, and at what the emptiness brought to mind. His symbol list puts long objects among the male symbols, which makes a rocket going up a sexual image in his terms. That's the most literal reading on offer, to hold lightly, since his own rule put your associations first.

Questions to ask about your space dream

Space is about distance, so ask what you were far from and what you were heading toward.

• Were you floating, flying a ship, lost or stranded?
• Did the emptiness feel peaceful or frightening?
• Were you alone, or was someone with you or on the radio?
• Where in your life do you want more room, or less distance?

Oniri asks something like this when you describe a dream to it, and the answers help it work out which kind of space yours was.