what about if you give the ship a new paint job?
it depends on your definition of object really. i like farmergiles' answer. to me, the idea or concept behind an object is more real than the object. the object is just a representation of what is in my mind, and what it represents to me is particular to my mind. you might say it exists only in my mind, because others will see within the same object a different representation. so to me an object and it's components are, strangely enough, immaterial.
what about location? is the location of an object part of what defines it? most of us don't think so, because objects appear the same through movement. but what about an ice cube? by simply moving from one place to another it can remarkably change its characteristics.
things do not only move spatially, they also move through time. are you the same person you were last year? not physically. you've shed a few trillion skin cells, bone calcium has been replaced, etc. every few years most of the cells in your body have died and been replaced. even your dna is different! with every replication the telomeres at the end of your chromosomes shorten.
in the face of all this i can't logically consider anything to ever be the "same" object. even what objects represent to me changes and evolves along with myself.
