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"[Science fiction is] anything that turns you and your social context, the social you, inside out."
- Gregory Benford

Spacefaring  
  A nation or people who explore and trade in space.  

By analogy to "seafaring".

The Finstera are not a spacefaring people; there was no possibility that the bogie would be identified as theirs.
Technovelgy from Citizen of the Galaxy, by Robert Heinlein.
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1957
Additional resources -

I think the phrase itself was used previously, as in Ballad of Venus Nell (1942) by NS Bono:

None but the most daring do any space-faring In those lethal, whirlagig niches,
But spacemen all claim that the Bog is aflame With infinite, fabulous riches.

But Heinlein really nails the usage, for my money.

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Additional resources:
  More Ideas and Technology from Citizen of the Galaxy
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  Tech news articles related to works by Robert Heinlein

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