Space Stage

Once the player leaves the Civilization stage, he/she enters the Space stage. In this stage, the player has built a vehicle (UFO) capable of travelling throughout their local star system in order to visit other planets within the system and ultimately to other star systems in the galaxy. When they do, the player's UFO will be able to explore and meet up with other civilizations on distant worlds. These civilizations are copies of other players' worlds, or some of the pre-generated worlds that will come with the game. This mode is generally referred to as a giant sandbox, as the player has near complete control of anything and everything. Many commonly touted features, such as terraforming planets outside your solar system, planetary zoos, alliances with other races, and interstellar warfare exist in game. One interesting feature that many people look forward to is the possibility of altering space-time to create black holes and other cosmic things such as stars and planets through the possible inclusion of the Galactic editor.

Overall, this phase is heavily based on sci-fi histories and various celestial phenomena that are visible from Earth, like black holes and supernovas. Players gain UFO upgrades by completing different game objectives (see badges). But even after gaining access to upgrades the player still has to spend sporebucks to buy it. Sporebucks are gained by trading spice between planets or civilizations, gathering and selling ancient items or completing quests that are given by their own or different civilizations.

Other alien races
Relation Bonus

Known powers in Space Phase

 * The player may terraform and colonize uninhabitable planets with special tools that are purchased with spore bucks (water tool, volcano tool, etc.) The ultimate power in that area would be a technology which Wright dubbed the Genesis device, named after the device in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, both of which have the same purpose: transform a dead world into a planet capable of sustaining life in a matter of minutes. Players may colonize hostile worlds, but may not build structures there until the planet is at least semi-habitable.
 * During the 2007 TED conference, Wright showed off the planetary effects the UFO can have, such as pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere to increase the amount of greenhouse gas/gases, which over time caused the oceans to rise and flood coastal cities, and eventually evaporate and transform the world into an arid desert planet then a molten rock in space similar to Venus. Wright semi-jokingly called it "a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth."
 * The player may travel between star systems and make contact with other civilizations on distant worlds, most of which are created by other players. Interactions revealed so far include impressing civilizations with fireworks, attacking them with weapons, or trying to establish a language with the civilization. These civilizations may react violently to the player or worship them, depending on that civilization's behavior and the race's personality.
 * The player can try to conquer the galaxy by different means: beginning an interstellar war, diplomatically creating an interstellar union, etc.
 * The player can run the mouse over other star systems and their individual planets to try to pick up radio static or noise that can indicate intelligent life.
 * The player may abduct creatures (familiar or unfamiliar) and transport them to other planets. Players can do this to test a planet's inhabitants to see if they are friendly or not, or to merely test a planet's habitability. The abduction tool can also be used to throw creatures into orbit.
 * The player may interbreed different species genetically.
 * The player may cause icy comets to crash into a planet to create water.
 * The player may place a "monolith" (à la 2001: A Space Odyssey) on a planet, triggering evolution of intelligent life, then come back later to see what has evolved.
 * The player may use a blackhole for "wormhole-travel" which allows the player to travel distances the UFO would require hours to cover in seconds.
 * The player may use a weapon to completely destroy a planet (similar to the capabilities of the Death Star from the Star Wars saga).
 * The player may scan content and add the information to a database designed like a card game called the Sporepedia.
 * The player may also find strange objects with unknown purposes to be used later on, possibly adding tools for the UFO.

Philosophy
Philosophy in Spore is the attribute given to your species in the Space Phase. There are 10 kinds of philosophy in Spore. archetypes are determined based on the number of each "color" (green/social, blue/balanced, red/aggressive) you went through evolving. Philosophies can only be gained if you started at the Cell stage.

Superstructures

 * It is "confirmed" in this thread that Dyson Spheres, RingWorlds, other superstructures, and space stations will not be in the initial version of Spore; however, some people doubt the authenticity of the emails. They were not included in the initial release of the game.

Single-Player

 * Like other content in Spore, a player who chooses to opt-out of downloading material from the Internet (or has no Internet connection) will have worlds populated with both sapient and nonsapient creatures straight from the disc provided to them, much like those provided to populate the ecosystem of the player's home planet.

Multiplayer

 * It has been stated numerous times that Spore is not planned as a multiplayer game. Because others' games are asynchronous with the player's, something one player does in their galaxy would not affect another player's galaxy. For example, if a copy of Player A's world was uploaded to the main database and distributed to Player B's galaxy, wherein it was decided to be blown up, this would not affect Player A's game in any way.

Difficulty Level

 * Made Empires in Easy and Normal modes demand reasonable amounts of money in exchange for peace and adjust the level of punishment if the player doesn't pay
 * Made disasters less likely to occur in Easy and Normal modes and increased the time between each attack from the enemy empire when the player is at war.

Easy

 * Spaceship base health is 1500

Normal

 * Spaceship base health is 1000

Hard

 * Spaceship base health is 300
 * Increased pirate attack frequency.
 * Increased attack frequency when at war.
 * Warrior and Zealot nations demand more unreasonable quantities of money in exchange for peace.