If the nose and body of the spacecraft are seperate objects, you can create a texture for each and assign them independently with different UVW co-ordinates each. If they are all one, you will need to edit the image to make the right parts appear in the right places (as far as I know). UVWmapping has many projection options (planar, cylindrical, spherical, etc...) plus options to change the stretch and compression of the texture, and make it fit over the mesh.
Mainly, experiment!