Further research: Lighting

 Most spaces movies have very similar ways of making their scenes look like actual space. And the most common way I have seen used in movies like 2001, Interstellar, and First Man, is that those movies use miniature versions of their designed space ships and place it in either a black or digital background.

(Credit: "Corridor Crew" from Youtube)

In the original 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick redefined how space ships are shown. Although Kubrick was not the first director to use scaled down models of a ship, seen in Frau im Mond and Forbidden Planet, he has been the first director to use much bigger and more detailed models than other movies that came before it. 

This leads to the biggest question: How did Kubrick film the space ships without the rigs holding them up be seen? In a video done by Corridor Crew on Youtube, featuring Adam Savage, a incredibly well known special effects designer and fabricator, actor, educator, television personality, and producer; he explained that the ships were still being held by rigs on camera, its just that it was so dark that the rigs couldn't be seen.

Savage further explains that the camera moves, not the space ship itself. If the model did move, it would have shown and revealed the rigs holding the ship up through lighting. This also meant that it would have taken longer to shoot those shots because the dollies had to be smooth and clean. So Kubrick had to film the dolly shots of the ships moving over and over again until there is not a single shake visible on camera. 

And this technique has been done for movies like Interstellar and First Man, except that instead of hiding the rigs or hiding the exposed portions of the background, they just crop it out in post production. First Man takes it a bit more different by using a soundstage, a large round tv background mounted on gimbals. As seen here in a behind the scenes video of First Mans VFX. 

Newer movies like Interstellar and First Man use motion control movement base underneath their models to get cleaner movements of their ships, a far cry from when cameras needed to be manually dollied in 2001. With even Christopher Nolan, the director of Interstellar, having a sort of steering wheel configuration where he can control the 50 ft model in real time. 

Speaking of models, another film necessity born from Kubrick's 2001 is the need for multiple models of the same ship. This is so that the different shots of the same ship can be achieved. For example a wide shot of a spacecraft can achieved by using a smaller model of the ship. But a close up shot of the same ship needs a more bigger and detailed model, such as in Interstellar where the Endurance, the name of the spacecraft, is 15th the scale of the actual designed concept for the model. As explained here in a behind the scenes video of Interstellar by the VFX supervisor of Interstellar, Paul Franklin.

I don't have big fancy sets or soundstage, all I am working with is a small black backdrop, but I feel like that Kubrick's trick alone of making the background dark enough to hide the rigs is enough to make my film look realistic enough.