So, my friendly local game store is closed for a private event today, which is why I'm not currently reading through the Spelljammer: Adventures in Space box set. The part I think I'm most excited for is Boo's Astral Menagerie, though I'll be eager to look through all three parts.
One of the biggest changes with 5th Edition Spelljammer that they've introduced is that Wildspace regions are no longer connected via the Phlogiston, but instead the Astral Sea - itself another name for or perhaps a part of the Astral Plane.
The Astral Plane, though, is also a transitive plane that allows creatures to journey between the Outer Planes. Because interplanar geometries don't have to exist within a 3D space (each plane being one or more infinite 3D spaces, after all) the Outer Planes are both adrift in the Astral Plane and arranged in their Great Wheel.
The Astral Sea in Spelljammer actually plays a role quite similar to "hyperspace" as seen in lots of sci-fi. The idea in science fiction is that travel between the stars is very difficult due to the limits on the speed of light. In the real world, nothing can accelerate past a speed of roughly 300 million meters per second (it's a little lower). That's a problem when the closest star other than our own sun is about 4 light years away. Even if we were somehow able to get close to the speed of light, it would still take four years for us to get just to the next star system, and the likelihood that there's anything all that useful to us (or that we'd find aliens there) is probably very, very low.
So, science fiction has come up with various ways to explain how we break the speed of light so that we can have star-hopping adventures. Hyperspace usually involves allowing a spaceship to take its contents (including the crew) into a sort of parallel universe where either distances are much shorter or far higher speeds are possible. (Not all of them work this way. In Star Trek, they instead warp the shape of space itself around their ships, essentially surfing on a wave in the very fabric of space, shortening distances ahead and lengthening it behind so that the ship within any given bubble of space is not traveling faster than light, but outside their "warp field" they appear to be doing so).
But Spelljammer is more fantasy-in-space than science fiction. And thus, the Astral Plane is not just "hyperspace," but a realm of thought and mind where the corpses of dead gods float, and portals to other planes drift as well.
In the DMG, the Astral Plane has hazards like Psychic Winds that can be very dangerous, but it's also a realm where one can find portals to the Outer Planes. Spelljammer ships can fly, taking off from planets in the Prime Material Plane and journeying through the Astral Sea to reach other worlds. For example, you could get in a Spelljammer on Toril (the Forgotten Realms) and rocket off through Realmspace and then into the Astral Sea, traveling from there to Athasspace and arriving on the world of Athas (Dark Sun).
But, theoretically, you should also be able to sail your Spelljammer into one of these "color pool" portals in the Astral Sea and arrive in one of the Outer Planes. That ruby pool could see your ship arrive above the battlefields of Avernus within the Nine Hells.
Thus, while Spelljammer's focus is certainly more around the outer-space weirdness of Wildspace and the Astral Sea, this also opens up a whole possibility for interplanar adventure aboard your ship.
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