No Man's Sky Spacewalk and Strip Space Hulks

Space hulks are not derelict freighters. Derelicts still start from an Emergency Signal Scanner (or a random pulse encounter), drop you into a haunted corridor with a crew log and a captain’s chest, and pay Nanites. Hulks are EVA spacewalk wrecks hung in the system as Cosmos points of interest. You leave the ship, drift the skeleton, and pull the bones apart. Mixing the two loops is how people waste scanners and then complain the wreck has no rooms.

Cosmos 7.0 (9 September 2026) put hulks on the star system map. Hotfix 7.01 (Steam 10 September 2026, rolling to other platforms) tightened the warnings and the co-op loot. This page is the strip order, the melt rule, and how outposts turn scrap into a space station claim. Hello Games launched the game on 12 August 2016 with empty pulse corridors; this is the opposite of that hallway.

Mark the wreck, then spacewalk

Open the star system map from the Quick Menu after the save has visited the Space Anomaly. Hulks, belts, outposts, and bio-wrecks stay put. Mark the hulk. Fly there in a Corvette if you have one — the Tractor Beam is the hold that makes the loop pay. Any ship can eject and spacewalk after Cosmos; only the Corvette eats physical salvage in bulk. The controls Quick Menu eject and six-degrees-of-freedom roll are the movement lesson. Cold protection drains in open space unless another hazard is cooking you. Bring Sodium habits from Getting Started.

The Multi-Tool half is the Gravitino Coil from Remnant (11 February 2026). It yanks chunks free. Throw them toward the Corvette beam. Do not treat the Coil as a mining laser; it is a crane. If you skipped Remnant, install the Coil before you EVA. Patch history is the timeline; Cosmos 7.0 is the feature list that assumes you already own both toys from Voyagers and Remnant.

Park close. Drift with a plan. A friend on the deck watching integrity is worth more than a third decorative thruster. Online co-op, Cross-Play, and Cross-Save all work on the wreck. This is still a session you play over a network, not a couch clone of the hulk.

Scan first. High-value first. Leave before it melts.

The wreck has structural integrity. That integrity is a timer you cannot see clearly if you strip at random. Scan first. Tag the high-value cargo and tech nodes. Pull those. Leave the decorative rust if the timer is complaining. Over-strip and the hulk melts down and explodes. Greedy shipbreaking is a fireworks show you do not walk away from.

7.01 improved meltdown messaging, so the game now tells you more honestly when the skeleton is about to go. Believe it. Jettison a bad hold with the beam if you grabbed sentient or worthless cargo — the vent button exists for a reason. 7.01 fixed the Vent Cargo tractor control, which had been lying to people who thought they could not dump.

Bio-wrecks and infested outposts use the same Coil fantasy with extra horror. Official notes call out Pathogen Sacs and related samples. 7.01 swapped Pathogen Sac and Viral Heart icons that were inverted, so loot tooltips match the organ you think you bagged. Clear goop, bag samples, do not farm them like a depot. Check the resource list when a tooltip name does not match the blob in your suit.

Online co-op is the right way to run a large hulk: one Traveller on Coil, one on beam, one watching integrity. 7.01 lets both multiplayer players claim rare items instead of silently assigning the chest to whoever clicked first. Crew etiquette lives on the multiplayer page: Friends Only if you do not want tourists in the hold, PvP off if you are photographing the spine.

Outposts process the hold

Haul salvage to a Deep Space Outpost. The quartermaster (yellow door) and the yellow salvage terminal take contracts and process scrap. 7.01 added a Galactic Trade Terminal in the Quartermaster room, so you can sell without flying to the system’s NPC station. That terminal is how the loop funds units and nanites and how salvage materials unlock some exterior station parts after 7.01.

Contracts from that board — often about five — are the usual proof when you want to claim a space station. The hulk is the mine. The outpost is the office. The station is the prize. A freighter is none of those things: it is a capital ship with frigates and fleet expeditions, summoned from the Quick Menu, unrelated to EVA wreck stripping. Do not spend an Emergency Signal Scanner on a hulk. Do not expect a hulk to offer you a captain’s chair.

Faction flavour still matters at the outpost. Gek clerks pay like merchants. Korvax talk like a lab. Vy’keen would rather you had shot something. Standing pages on the factions hub keep that straight, including Autophage if the system is wearing purple.

What not to confuse

• Derelict freighters — Emergency Signal Scanner, interior dungeon, Nanite logs. Still valid. Not hulks.
• Crashed starships on planets — claim and scrap at a station pad. See Ships and Corvettes.
• Freighter battles — pirate waves around a capital ship. See Freighters.
• Player-owned stations — director clubhouses after Cosmos. See Space Stations.
• Corvettes — Voyagers modular hulls that carry the tractor beam.

Base building is where leftover station cosmetics go once you are director. Expeditions will send you into this toy box in historical order during Expedition 23; do not speedrun a melt just to tick a milestone. The Guides Hub will still send new saves to scanners and Sodium. Hulks are a mid-save sport.

The Traveller who scans, pulls the expensive nodes, and leaves with a half-stripped wreck is richer than the Traveller who filmed the meltdown. Come back tomorrow; Cosmos points of interest stay on the map. Integrity does not. Leave rust on the ribs on purpose, process the hold at the yellow door, and spend the first profits on Coil upgrades or station exterior parts — not on a third paint job for a Corvette that already flies.