spacecraft n.
any vehicle designed to travel in space
Science
Vehicles
-
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.
-
1930 Buck Rogers, 2429 A.D. in Mt. Pleasant Daily Times (Michigan) 7 Nov.
page image
Philip Francis Nowlan
Wilma and I prepared to board the mysterious space craft we had met on our trip to Mars.
-
1931 Atomic Fire in Amazing Stories Apr. 67/1
page image
Raymond Z. Gallun
bibliography
The ship is gaining altitude faster than I ever saw a space craft do before at the outset. But I suppose you have to expect such performance from any new invention of the Fallefs. Everything they produce is wonderful.
-
1942 Meteor-Men of Mars in Planet Stories Winter 114/2
page image
Otis Adelbert Kline
Harry Cord
bibliography
Unharmed the fugitives passed through the dilating door, and dipped down the side of the huge space craft.
-
1963 Encounter in Amazing Stories June 98/1
page image
J. G. Ballard
bibliography
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.
-
1985 Alien Swordmaster . iii. 18
S. P. Somtow
bibliography
In the interior of another spacecraft, Visitors were collapsing, tearing off their human faces and showing the…horrors beneath.
-
1990 Rocheworld 8
Robert L. Forward
Prepare for an authorized inspection of a foreign spacecraft.
-
1991 Xenocide xviii. 383
Orson Scott Card
I believe our history is older than the spacecraft that brought it here.
-
1992 Fire upon Deep xxxviii. 337
Vernor Vinge
bibliography
He had managed spacecraft and weapons that could have reduced the feudal empire below to slag.
-
1993 Locus June 59/1
Liss is a starshipper, a resident of one of the spacecraft that wander the inhabited galaxy.
-
1995 Truth is out There: Official Guide to The X Files The Episodes: Season 1 120
Chris Carter
Soon, however, communication with the spacecraft is lost and Generoo’s car crashes as the strange face zooms in at her through the fog.
-
2009 Sea of Dreams in Asimov’s Science Fiction Oct.–Nov. 142
page image
William Barton
bibliography
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.
Research requirements
antedating 1929
Earliest cite
New York Times
Last modified 2020-12-16 04:08:47
In the compilation of some
entries, HDSF has drawn extensively on corresponding entries
in OED.