Fixing Up a Crashed Ship
Whenever you see a crashed ship in No Man’s Sky, be sure to go inspect it. You will probably need a lot of resources to repair the ship and get it running again, but the wreck you find might just be better than the one you have right now. Before trading your current ship for the crashed one, do make sure that you at least have the resources to fix up the more important components of the ship, like the Launch Drive and Pulse Drive to get it off the ground.
If you interact with the crashed ship by hitting square, you can also transfer the cargo from your current ship to the crashed one (not including upgrades). After you’ve finished loading up the crashed ship with all the items you want to bring along, hit ‘Exchange’ and the ship trade will now be complete.
If you want to loot the cargo from the crashed ship, you’ll have to complete the trade first, and then interact with your old ship and transfer everything there the same way you did with the crashed one.