Space exploration is making significant strides, with private companies exploring the possibility of opening space to the average person. Space tourism is now a reality, with various types of space travel being explored, including orbital, suborbital, and lunar travel. Spaceship Neptune offers a six-hour tour of Earth’s biosphere, culminating in a view of our planet. Commander Suni Williams of Expedition 33 continues the International Space Station tour with a look at Destiny, Kibo. Orion, Nasa’s new spaceship, is designed to visit destinations like the Moon and Mars. Space tourism is now a reality, and this guide provides information on booking a galactic getaway, from how to get up there to what to see and bring. Commander Suni Williams starts her tour of the International Space Station with a look at its nodes — Harmony, Tranquility, and Unity. Space tourism offers various experiences, from rocket flights to space exploration. The guide explores how to visit space as a tourist today and what new adventure options we can expect in the future.
📹 A guided tour of my 100-hour spaceship 🚀 (+ Free project download!)
Taking a walk around the SS Corinthion – a Cathedral Class Luxury Cruiser! At the end of the stream there will be a download link …
Can you take a tour to space?
Space tourism encompasses private recreational space flights, with three types: orbital, suborbital, and lunar. Lunar tourism involves private space trips that orbit or land on the moon, but tickets are not yet available to the public. Suborbital space tourism is another option, with Virgin Galactic offering reservations for future flights for just under half a million dollars. These trips may cross the boundary of space but don’t travel fast enough to stay there.
Virgin Galactic’s first crewed flight only experienced 4 minutes of weightlessness, and it was debated whether it reached space. To sign up for suborbital space tourism, one must have a spare $450, 000 or less.
What would be inside a spaceship?
A spacecraft consists of essential components like an engine, power subsystem, steering system, communications system, and science instruments. These systems are housed in the service module, while the payload module consists of science instruments. The spacecraft’s electrical framework connects these systems. The propulsion system a satellite carries is determined by its orbital position and mission type. It may have an upper stage, such as Fregat, to deliver the spacecraft to a higher or escape orbit.
The spacecraft may also carry its own propulsion module for orbital manoeuvres or adjustment. Smaller thrusters may be included for fine orbit adjustments and stationkeeping. Cold gas propulsion is the simplest type of chemical propulsion, consisting of pressurized gas and a nozzle.
Where to go in space?
The Caloris Basin on Mercury, as seen from the Messenger spacecraft in 2008, is one of the 10 places to visit in the Solar System. Other popular destinations include the Apollo 11 landing site, Sea of Tranquility, Moon, Valles Marineris, Mars, Olympus Mons, Great Red Spot, Io, Europa, and Saturn’s Rings. These places offer natural beauty, aren’t overcrowded with tourists, and don’t require passports or vaccinations.
To visit these places, one needs a fast rocket, enough food, water, and air, which could take months or even years. The Caloris Basin on Mercury is a prime example of a place to visit in the Solar System.
What do we do on the space station?
Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) conduct scientific experiments and maintain the station. They also engage in daily exercise, eat a variety of foods, and sleep in special bags. The Space Shuttle Atlantis exhibit features the ISS: Triumph of Technology section, showcasing real space-flown artifacts. Over 227 spacewalks have been completed to maintain and upgrade the ISS, ensuring its longevity and functionality. The ISS exhibit also houses the ISS: Triumph of Technology section, showcasing the achievements of space exploration.
What is the space station like inside?
The International Space Station, operated by an international partnership of five space agencies from 15 countries, has been continuously occupied since November 2000. It has a crew of seven people and makes 16 orbits of Earth in 24 hours, traveling through 16 sunrises and sunsets. Peggy Whitson set the U. S. record for spending the most total time living and working in space at 665 days on Sept. 2, 2017.
The living and working space is larger than a six-bedroom house and includes six sleeping quarters, two bathrooms, a gym, and a 360-degree view bay window. Astronauts work out at least two hours a day to mitigate muscle and bone mass loss in microgravity.
The solar array wingspan is longer than the world’s largest passenger aircraft, the Airbus A380. The large modules and other pieces of the station were delivered on 42 assembly flights, 37 on the U. S. space shuttles, and five on Russian Proton/Soyuz rockets. The 55-foot robotic Canadarm2 is used to move entire modules, deploy science experiments, and transport spacewalking astronauts. Eight spaceships can be connected to the space station at once, and a spacecraft can arrive as soon as four hours after launching from Earth.
More than 20 different research payloads can be hosted outside the station at once, including Earth sensing equipment, materials science payloads, and particle physics experiments. The space station travels an equivalent distance to the Moon and back in about a day, with the Water Recovery System reducing crew dependence on water. On-orbit software monitors approximately 350, 000 sensors, ensuring station and crew health and safety.
What’s it like to be in space?
Weightlessness is a significant factor in life in space, as astronauts find it exhilarating to adapt to their new environment. However, weightlessness complicates daily life, including eating and sleeping, and can cause health problems both in space and upon return to Earth. High radiation levels outside the Earth’s atmosphere can also pose a threat, with some causing a slight increase in cancer risk in later life. Human psychology also plays a significant role in the situation, as life in space requires living with limited space.
The International Space Station (ISS) is larger than any previous space structure, but astronauts enjoy stunning views of the universe, but their cramped living quarters and shared living quarters with fellow crew members can be a challenge.
What is NASA tours?
NASA Tram Tours provide an on-site perspective of the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC), a 1, 600-acre facility that serves as the training ground for astronauts and the site of Mission Control. Members are eligible for a 50% discount on the Historic Mission Control Tram Tour, with the number of admissions permitted per membership level being limited. To become a member, please visit spacecenter. org/membership.
How can I travel in space?
Space travel can be achieved through rockets or capsules, with the former landing like an airplane on a runway and the latter descending beneath parachutes onto land or water. Both vehicles experience a range of G-forces during reentry, but capsules have a rougher ride, particularly at the very end. The parachute comes out, causing disorientation and a bump on the ground or water. Although there are shock-absorbing mechanisms, the ground is hit hard on Soyuz, which can be surprising.
Although it may cost a small fortune for a suborbital flight and millions for longer-duration orbital stays, astronauts will tell you it’s worth the investment. The cost of going into space as a tourist is currently around several hundred thousand dollars for a suborbital flight and millions for longer-duration orbital stays.
What is inside a space shuttle?
The Orbiter vehicle’s cockpit, living quarters, and experiment operator’s station are situated in the forward fuselage, while payloads are carried in the mid-fuselage payload bay. The main engines and maneuvering thrusters are in the aft fuselage. The forward fuselage houses the pressurized crew module, which supports the nose section, nose gear, wheel well, and doors. The 65. 8-cubic-meter crew station module is a three-section pressurized compartment, consisting of the flight deck, middeck/equipment bay, and airlock. A docking module and transfer tunnel can be fitted outside the payload bay for crew and equipment transfer for docking, Spacelab, and extravehicular operations.
What do people do in space tourism?
Space tourism is a form of human space travel for recreational purposes, involving various types such as orbital, suborbital, and lunar travel. The industry began in 2001 with Dennis Tito becoming the first space tourist to travel to space aboard a Soyuz-TM32 spacecraft. From 2001 to 2009, seven space tourists made eight space flights aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station, with the price range of $20-25 million per trip.
Anousheh Ansari became the first female space tourist in 2006. Space tourism was considered one of the earliest markets for commercial spaceflight by 2007. Before going to space, space tourists must be in good physical form, training for fast acceleration and weightlessness through parabolic arcs in a high-altitude jet plane. They may also learn to operate and fix spaceship parts using simulators.
What is a space tour guide?
As a Space Tourism Guide at Stellar Voyagers, you will be responsible for creating exceptional space travel experiences for clients. Your duties include providing detailed information on various space travel destinations, helping clients select the most suitable packages, educating tourists about safety protocols, accompanying clients during their journey, sharing knowledge about unique features of space travel, and providing exceptional customer service.
The ideal candidate should have a Bachelor’s degree in Hospitality Management, Tourism, or a related field, proven experience in the tourism or hospitality industry, strong knowledge of space travel destinations, safety protocols, and the emerging space tourism industry, excellent interpersonal and communication skills, exceptional organizational skills, ability to remain calm in high-pressure situations, fluency in English, personal experience with space travel or related fields, familiarity with space vehicles, spacesuits, and equipment used in space travel, and training or certifications in emergency response or first aid.
In summary, this role requires a combination of knowledge, experience, and a strong understanding of space travel destinations, safety protocols, and equipment.
📹 TIMELAPSE OF FUTURE SPACECRAFT: 2025 – 3000+
A sci fi documentary looking at a timelapse of future spacecraft. From the future of AI spaceships, Starship orbital refuelling, and …
There is a way to use your capture card and still use the maximum refresh rate for your monitor. Just plug the capture card directly in your other HDMI socket in your GPU card (and not in your monitor. Your monitor should be plugged directly in the GPU too), and the system will see it as a different screen that you can extend to. Then, still on your blender PC, open OBS, set up a simple scene to capture the screen from your main monitor, and project it on the second virtual screen. You don’t need to stream or record anything with OBS. Then on your streaming PC you can capture that virtual screen. There is a article here that explains it. youtube.com/watch?v=eK9Dd0-CBqw&t=73s
What you say about Geometry Nodes and keep searching and entering words all the time is actually not at all how I feel about it. I always started with Shift+A and just trying to find manually what I want. It’s not different from how I started in the Shader Editor. You learn where your most used nodes are very quickly. I’m actually annoyed when so many in Youtube tutorials search each and every even simplest node in Geometry Nodes. I always think, oh come on, really? That’s the most basic node… and so on 😆
Now that we are creative people why don’t we at least give it a go to design something that doesn’t have to have an ancient Indian class system build into it but maybe builds upon the more organic and natural diversity principle? The creative mind needs to be set free so I dare you to se if you can figure that out. ❤
Nice to look at, but the timeline is… optimistic. These flights of fancy always overlook politics, economics, natural and unnatural disasters and general human apathy and intransigence. Allowing five years to a decade between technological bursts is probably a more realistic scenario. I remember seeing several of these ideas forecast in the Sixties and Seventies (O’Neill cylinders, fusion drive, etc). And in sci-fi, of course, notably works by Olaf Stapleton in the Thirties, particularly Star Maker, which contains the first description of what later came to be called a Dyson sphere. Self interest has always scuttled visionary endeavours unfortunately.
My grandparents were born before the Wright Brothers took the first powered flight. and I remember being hurried into my schools library (Marrickville primary Sydney Australia), in 1969 to watch Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. I now hope to see the large scale colonization of Mars in my lifetime. We have come incredibly far in an incredibly short space of time. It is an amazing development of a species only a couple of hundred thousand years old. Congrats to all.
I agree that the timeline seems optimistic and the political/societal issues aren’t accounted for, but people can do multiple things simultaneously, you can have a mars landing one year with start shot being sent the next year, and two years later fusion becomes a thing simply because different people are working on different technologies and efforts concurrently. Not everything has to be a perfectly and distantly spaced chronologically ordered list of breakthroughs.
Alcubierre drives in 2090 is extremely generous. Giving us just a mere 70 years to figure out a technology that we have no concrete proof is even possible, as it completely relies on a form of matter that is purely theoretical. Also it would take more energy to power such a device as we can find in the ENTIRE OBSERVABLE UNIVERSE.
As someone who was born on 2nd July 1957, I will be lucky to see half of this series of articles happen in my lifetime and I wish you every success. I can remember Man Landing on the Moon in 1969, in fact the whole family (Mother, Father and 7 children watched the LIVE Broadcast via UK TV) and later on the next day was also able to watch it again at school (complete with the LIVE LOGO on screen for the duration of the re-Broadcast of the LIVE TV Program I watched the previous Morning UK TIme) I even told the Headmast the famous Buzz Aldring quote BEFORE the tv prorgram began, “One small set for Man, ONE GIANT leap for Mankind”. Needless to say I doubt if I was believed, but to my surprise I was Named by the Headmaster who quoted me, quoting Buzz Aldrin, he then asked how I knew about the quote as it was not in the Newspapers and the TV transmission said it was LIVE. I simple answered it was a live tv recording of what happend at 3am UK Time. This was years before home article players were invented. Tony in England
Still love a lot of the sci-fi concepts here, but it could be cool to speculate on how humanity tackles everything this website addresses when A: fusion is not achieved and B: FTL is not possible Stuff like developing faster, more durable deep space probes as newer and further space telescopes study black holes and search for evidence of wormholes. Quantum computing and AI merge to massively improve production and map routes for probes through the cosmos. Humans establish multicultural colonies on the promising bodies in our solar system, and it all wraps up with preparation for the long journey to Alpha Centauri Totally just pulled all of that out of my brain, but I’d love to see these guys research and present it the amazing way they do. Fact or fiction these articles are always incredibly inspiring and thought provoking, and makes me want to work on these incredible things
This is very optimistic. If you doubled the timeframe it’d be a little more believable. Not to mention ramjets would be close to useless in our local interstellar neighborhood. Also, Alcubierre Warp Drives are very very theoretical. Very unlikely that we could ever build one, let alone within a hundred years. Same goes for wormholes- very very unlikely that they exist, and far less likely that they would ever be traversable.
Interesting article, though a few errors and nitpicks. First the treatment of Quantum computers in the part about AGI. While there are things QC’s can do that conventional binary systems and conventional analog systems (they still exist, just not in the volume, nor use cases as binary) the obverse is also true. I doubt an AGI would be somehow magically tied to QC’s. The second is the interstellar ramjets, called Bussard ramjets, recent work (in the last ten years) on the idea shows it likely won’t work, in part because the drag to thrust ratio is not as favorable as Bussard though when he came up with the idea.
The timescale is… optimistic, and that’s an understatement. Also, the piezoelectric system is unrealistic, it violates the law of conservation of energy by making the crystals ‘lighter and heavier’, making it just as realistic as an ‘EM drive’. The Alcubièrre drive is realistic except for one thing, we do not yet know whether negative energy exists, which is needed to expand space in front of the vessel. The shkadov thruster does allow for a change in the sun’s orbit around the galactic center, but does not necessarily guarantee the safety of the solar system, since it only has one thrust setting: ‘full’, which does not provide much thrust at all, and the thruster can only be placed on either pole of the sun. A caplan thruster would be a more controllable, higher power alternative, but this would require advanced fusion technology and a dyson swarm in orbit of the sun.
I mean like that’s so calming and good to know about the future of us, but imagine if that AI someday gets out of control and gets behind humans to destroy them and conquer everything, just like the Ultron did in Avengers Age of Ultron, I mean like that would be really dangerous handing over everything to a computer program…..
My dear sister brothers when looking at the Galaxy and Universe the incredible images that Hablo and James bring we travel light years to other star systems of the Galaxy and Universe so human curiosity and creativity makes us want to create advanced Starships Wrap Espace Ship yes I believe that faster than we think we will travel through the Galaxy O The Designer and the energy sources presented here in this article are very interesting and deserve all the credit, but we must think of alternatives as good as these, such as ether energy stored in quantum crystals cold plasma captured from the dark matter of space itself is just a suggestion great job Bravo 👋👋👋 Namaste 🙏
I was 6 years old when mankind first set foot on the moon. Science fiction writers and tv told me that I would be living and working in space and that we all had a glorious future where nobody would be hungry, work would be fulfilling and adventurous and we would travel the stars. Then suddenly we didn’t care about space anymore, the advancement of the species meant nothing against the importance of the individual and now half of us are trying to work out what pro-noun we should call somebody while the other half consider which bathroom they should go to. As I near the end of my life I watch articles of this and feel that I was robbed of my future.
This is a good article for the first several minutes… * The crystal drive (8:40) is fully in the realm of fantasy. Even if you could gain momentum from this presumed piezoelectric change in mass, it requires enormous amounts of electricity, which in turn takes fuel. * Matter/antimatter reactions (9:00) do indeed produce truly enormous amounts of energy, but it’s in the form of gamma rays. They’re very dangerous and don’t by themselves produce appreciable thrust. To move a vessel, you’d have to surround the reaction in matter that would absorb the gamma rays, rapidly heat, and shoot out the back to produce thrust. This reaction mass, though not fuel, is still required in large amounts to make it useful. * The Bussard Ramjet (9:50) could work, but areas with plentiful interstellar hydrogen also contain lots of solid matter that (if electrically neutral) could put holes through the ship when impacting at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. A ramjet might reach the center of the galaxy in 21 years (10:12), but Earth time wouldn’t be 42 years – more like 100,000. This would definitely be developed well after asteroid bases, not before. * Spinning asteroids (10:40) to generate artificial gravity is unlikely to work because rock has tremendous strength in compression, but very little in tension. Spin an asteroid fast enough to be useful and it will just fall apart. * A warp drive (10:45) would take several monumental breakthroughs in physics and would probably take the power output of a small star to work (entirely impractical), or at least kilograms of antimatter (absurdly dangerous).
Just found this website today with the “New to You” tab…..subbed instantly. I absolutely love the optimistic tones to these amazing, thought provoking, and visually stimulating articles. Unfortunately, and as usual, humanity will find a way to weaponize some of these things much sooner rather than later and the effect it will have is to wipe humanity out of extinction.
I already think the Universe IS a thinking intelligent entity. That is why we are here. We are the Universe’s creation out of the necessity of being, and our conscienceness and physical life is a the reward to the Universe for existing in the monotinous and boring space and time realm without physical substance. Pure knowledge really has no purpose other than existing. The love we share is far more of value to the universe than just knowledge.
People, the entire purpose of these articles IS optimism. Yes, there are immense scientific, political, and sociological challenges to all of this but, there articles show what we MIGHT be capable of. Where we end up is, always, our choice as a species. And right now, I will settle for diminishing the number of people who believe the Earth is flat to zero.
I love the concept, but its extremely optimistic. Obviously, a lot of the theory’s have been taken from outside sources, such as the film Aliens, the TV series, The Expanse, and the game, Elite Dangerous. Whether I believe these things are possible, I’m not sure, whether they happen in this projected timescale, no chance!
About 10 minutes in, the article says that we’ll be able to get the center of the Milky Way in about 45 years Earth time, 21 years ship time, using ramjets. Hmm… So…ramjets are some kind of new hyper-luminal mode of travel? The center of the galaxy is about 26,000 light years away from us. So, wow! Ramjets will go 1000 times the speed of light?!? Nice!! (That drip you hear is sarcasm.)
Fantastic work! A little correction. Alcubierre is a Math guy, not an aerospace engineer, nor an engineer at all. He “borrowed” the basic idea of his “drive” from an american physicist named Thomas Townsend Brown, which PRACTICAL theory evolved from a dynamic study of super charged capacitors, and known as the Biefeld-Brown effect. TT Brown demonstrated the effect and it has been reproduced by honest (not myth busters) scientists, notably one of the early French space agency. My personal opinion; don’t fully trust a mathematician to devise a theory of space propulsion – erroneously requiring the entire energy of the universe to operate (obviously a pure nonsense, but “possible” by being stuck with an infinity symbol somewhere ). Not anymore than entrusting an MD to fix your cell phone. So please give credit where credit is deserved. And, very importantly, Alcubierre never built a working prototype, whereas TT Brown made several of them work. And two French engineers (independently) also made working prototypes. *Myth busters experiment was way short of the necessary voltage needed to make one work in vacuum – a heavy doze cynical-bias, preventing them from finding what one hour of internet would reveal to anyone else, as the real data. Very different motives are at work here: TT Brown = scientific advance, others discussed above = pizzazz, show and media-attention. I want to congratulate you for your outstanding article! It is very inspiring, and truly beautiful. Cheers!
Great documentary but two things I want to point out, the episode ends at the year 2044. So by that time we will still be using 120 year old space rocket technology? Wouldn’t that part also evolve, not just to upgrade them but to create entire new design using 22nd century tech. Also. Wouldn’t we have solved the integration of Mars born humans to be able to visit Earth and withstand the gravity.
pretty interesting, and nicely animated collecting a lot of concepts which are feasible and based on known physics and arranges them in a plausible order while explaining each basic concept. commendable! But it does go off the rails briefly at around 9:15 mark with ‘crystal powered ships’ and ‘antimatter propulsion’ using antimatter generated in particle accelerators, “it is also found in bananas” 🍌🤣🍌
You almost lost me at “45 years to the center of the galaxy at relativistic speeds.” You were correct that perceived time on-board the spacecraft would be ~21 years, but at relativistic speeds the center of the galaxy is still 20,000 years away for the observer on Earth. Wishful thinking can’t change the velocity of light or our ability to surpass it using traditional means, even a ram scoop. I wish it was otherwise, but it’s not. You went on to mention Alcubierre drives, so I assume this was merely a typo. You’re very optimistic, and I appreciate it!
Centripetal force to create artificial gravity causes disturbances in the inner ear leading to nausea and disorientation. The adverse effects may prove intolerable for the occupants. Walking or moving your body parallel to the spin direction is OK, but gets worse at bigger angles to the spin direction. It requires a massive moon size diameter to avoid the problem, so they theorize.
Looks pretty convincing technology wise, but that timeline…. Even without the post covid issues with global trade, the financial hit of net zero or the economic effects of war in Eastern Europe, that’s pretty optimistic. I would conservatively double that estimate, although beyond 20 years out any prediction is pretty much a shot in the dark.
Anything our mind can imagine will come true. I think at some point the technological advancement will again accelerate just like it did during the 20th Century. It all boils down to producing energy source that can fuel any new spaceship. We already have some ideas what that can be and they include Anti matters and antigravity fields. Finding energy source to create or find worm holes or a tear in the fabric of space time continuum will be the biggest challenge as the distances to galaxies are enormous to say the least.
The future is all about ENERGY. The fossil fuel squabbling is missing the point. Wind and solar are not even close to meeting energy needs of the future. The production of energy (heat) from fusion is probably the future. Also, how do we store energy is a huge hurdle. The order of magnitude of energy create needed for these projects are not currently availible.
the BIG problem, imho, is the shielding from deep space radiation, at the moment human experience in space (b.e. space stations) is using hearth magnetic shield to protect astronauts from radiation, unfortunately is still not clear how to protect from radiation a living form far away from our planet 😭
I am one of the biggest sci-fi enthusiast, and lovers of technology I know, but these things while very intriguing, will never happen IMHO. And while I understand the concept of burning multiple coals simultaneously I feel that we need to focus and devote our resources and capacities more on what’s occurring here on earth then to be so focused on spreading a broken destructive humanity to other celestial bodies.
10:24 in the article: Living inside an Asteroid…! I would like to take that accolade for having thinking it long ago when I was younger, but besides that hehe… The recent visitor we call “Oumuamua”…! All the scientists focus on what they could perceive in such a short time,. One sees it for what it could be…. but even he doesn’t seem to think the prospect that it could be SUCH a habitat!!!
The timeline is too optimistic. Things like nuclear fusion being developed quickly just isn’t happening. The tech is either unproven or impossible to achieve in such a short time span. Nuclear fusion hasn’t even produced more energy than it takes and that the method he described is quite unpractical as you would require forces way to high to achieve fusion like the sun does. Instead we use high temperatures( usually in excess of 100 million °C) and so the magnetic fields are actually used to keep the plasma in place to prevent it from escaping because no material on earth stays solid at 100 million °C (duh) and this is usually done in a doughnut shaped reactor called a tokmak and the magnetic field are generated by massive field coils. The lasers aren’t used to compress the fuel either, they are used to achieve fusion in a different type of reactor which achieves this by concentrating a bunch of lasers on a single small pellet of fuel and although this works, the tokmak is more popular. Even with all these, the reactors are extremely big especially the facilities housing them so it would be impossible if not highly impractical to build one in space and we certainly can’t build a smaller version in the future that can fit on a space ship. This all means that the timelines are just not realistic here and it fails to issue things like wars and other such issues which can slow technological growth making these even harder to make. Oh and this is literally the first things in the article so take this article with a grain of salt.
I seen a tech wormhole that appeared like a wagon wheel. The spokes were tubes of green radioactive looking with a mist around each tube. the tubes were held together but did not touch. It created a break in the center that allowed a saucer the size of a house to go thru. The sound of it was a roar that was deafening 1/2 mile away! It was next to an astronauts house who was a friend of mine and I saw NASA cars there on a regular basis! Dogs that barked constantly were silenced and no one came out of their house. I was next to a 40′ aluminum storage container. I think it put everyone asleep except me. Seen half a dozen crafts over the years and can say they can put thoughts in your head that are not yours and dumb you down so your thoughts a just clouded! I think they can record every thought, action, and deed you have. Maybe to decide who they are going to keep and who they are going to exclude from a multi-dimensional existence! Their are good guys and bad guys just like we have here! Lookup 1561AD, Nuremberg, Germany, UFO battle!
I suspect that the owner of this website is not an English speaker. He probably uses a computer voice on the articles. He kept on saying “spacecrafts” as a plural but this irritates native English speakers because the word “spacecraft” is an irregular plural so the word “spacecraft” is both singular and plural and the letter “s” is not needed when referring to multiple spacecraft.