spacecraft n.
any vehicle designed to travel in space
Science
Vehicles
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1929 Night-Thing in Weird Tales July 104/2
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Wilford Allen
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I saw the first of the great space craft….Not from Earth were those ships.
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1929 N.Y. Times 13 Oct. 4/1
If moon voyaging is ever to escape from the pages of pseudo-scientific thrillers, and until some one attains that other baseless dream of fictionists, the ‘nullification’ of gravity, space craft must depend for their motive power on rockets and nothing else.
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1930 Buck Rogers, 2429 A.D. in Mt. Pleasant Daily Times (Michigan) 7 Nov.
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Philip Francis Nowlan
Wilma and I prepared to board the mysterious space craft we had met on our trip to Mars.
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1942 Meteor-Men of Mars in Planet Stories Winter 114/2
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Otis Adelbert Kline
Harry Cord
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Unharmed the fugitives passed through the dilating door, and dipped down the side of the huge space craft.
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1953 Little Joe in Astounding Science Fiction Sept. 40/1
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Algis Budrys
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Little Joe was a cargo ship, broad of diameter in the loading locks, massive of bulkhead, and cramped of fo’c’s’le, which in spacecraft had returned to its traditional place in the otherwise useless compartments of the tapering prow.
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1963 Encounter in Amazing Stories June 98/1
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J. G. Ballard
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It sounded fascinating, almost Swiftian in concept. This space-craft which arrives from Venus and the strange conversation the pilot holds with a philosopher he meets.
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1972 In the Ocean of Night in Worlds of If May–June 21/1
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Gregory Benford
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The circling satellite…clearly resembled a beacon for approaching spacecraft.
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1985 Alien Swordmaster . iii. 18
S. P. Somtow
Somtow Sucharitkul
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In the interior of another spacecraft, Visitors were collapsing, tearing off their human faces and showing the…horrors beneath.
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1991 Xenocide xviii. 383
Orson Scott Card
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I believe our history is older than the spacecraft that brought it here.
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1995 Truth is out There: Official Guide to The X Files The Episodes: Season 1 120
Chris Carter
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Soon, however, communication with the spacecraft is lost and Generoo’s car crashes as the strange face zooms in at her through the fog.
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2009 Sea of Dreams in Asimov’s Science Fiction Oct.–Nov. 142
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William Barton
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The magic of inertialess space drives, the magic of anti-gravity. Hardly anybody knew we hadn’t invented it, had found it in a derelict alien spacecraft…thirty-five years ago.
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2025 North Station Blues in Analog Science Fiction & Fact July–Aug. 10/1
David Gerrold
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With a tethered platform, you could raise a spacecraft above the thickest part of the atmosphere and eliminate much of the need for a heavy launch vehicle.
Research requirements
antedating 1929
Earliest cite
Wilford Allen, in Weird Tales
Last modified 2026-03-18 13:01:53
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.
