War in space ("ship" vs "boat")

Thank for the extremely comprehensive message, now I finally
understand all this boat-ship mess! I see the light! ;-)

BTW, by Googling I found that the correct spell for the German word is
Unterseeboote, which in fact translates as "undersea boat". Talking
about languages, I think that nautical terminology in my own language
contributed for making everything more confuse to me: we call ships
"navios" (those things with tens to thousands of people on board), and
we call small nautical vehicles "barcos", but that is not quite the
same of "boat", I think, because some "barcos" cannot be carried on a
ship; I think that the definition is more related to the crew
capacity, although I am no sailor I would say that a "barco" has crew
under 10 and no passengers. Finally, for spaceships we for some
obscure reason use the archaic word "nave", which centuries ago had
the same meaning of "navio" but now is used only for fictional and
real spaceships regardless of their size. (A flying saucer, Battlestar
Galactica and the Apollo capsule are all "naves".)

On 11/28/05, Alexander Roderick wrote:
> Submarines are a special case. It's all about tradition, decending from the
> German usage Unterseeboot, or "U-Boat". (Did I spell that even remotely
> right?). So all subs are called "boats" in English speaking Navies, even if
> they are bigger than many ships. For surface craft, it is a general rule
> that a boat is a boat if it can be carried on a ship.
>
> When you get to space vessels, there's an extra twist. Most current
> spacecraft are also aircraft, so aviation terminology gets thrown into the
> mix. A lot of aviation terms come from nautical ones via a complex
> evolution, so they collide back together again in space. At one time, it
> was common to refer to aircraft as "ships", but this usage faded with time.
>
> Most often, for non-fictional craft, the designers make up new terms to name
> the vehicles in a strictly descriptive manner. Like: capsule, orbiter,
> re-entry vehicle, lunar lander, space station, or sattelite. The latest
> trend is towards descriptive acronyms, like LRV, UAV, etc. Very seldom is a
> current space vessel refered to as a "ship", especially since so many
> space-vehicle operators are from the Air Forces. On occasion, a pilot may
> use the term of endearment "bird", especially if his vehicle has wings
> (which only the space shuttle and Spaceship One do now).
(...)