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Steampunk is a genre beloved by many. It has many forms. The Post-apocalyptic return-to-steam, the Victorian England or Aristocratic American story, even the Wild Western. It can be fantasy, a love story, or even hard science fiction. The latter is what we're going to talk about (or write about if you want to be technical.) We here at the Kerbal Space Program forum certainly love our space travel and our hard science fiction. So how do you get steampunk rockets that can loft things into the Earth Orbit and beyond? This post aims to describe some of the possibilities to make rocketry and space travel in your steampunk world. If you have anything you would like to bring up to change or add, please do mention it. Where to Start? First, for general info on rockets in sci-fi, read Atomic Rockets. There's some cool sections on the decks of a ship, how an astronavigator crewmember would do their job. A good source of inspiration are rockets and spaceships drawn up in the time period between 1910s and 1950. They tend to be surprisingly low-tech (when they're not using nuclear power plants.), and use things like mercury boilers instead of solar panels. Lots of spheres and structural beams, usually with circular holes in them to save mass. Inspiration Fuel Types Faster Than Light?(really?) Faster Than Light is okay in some cases in somewhat hard sci-fi, because, to paraphrase Atomic Rockets, "everyone's doing it". If you use FTL, your science won't be as hard, but as long as everything else you do makes up for it in realism, you can use an FTL drive. It would be seriously hard to imagine, however, that steampunks would be able to produce the energies needed to go FTL on their own. They might piggyback on more advanced species, or use ancient stargates or naturally occurring wormholes. Or maybe your planet's religion can take care of it. In a fictional story, you may feel comfortable introducing a magical element into it, but I would imagine that would seriously start to contradict the hardness of the science. However, if the faith/magic and the science/technology are split neatly enough, so that your rocketships are all realistic and your magic is a background force that only wizards and priestonauts can use, then it may be excusable. For instance, my Kerbal-universe Vernians that worship the Luna 3 Probe. I would imagine your best bet for FTL is some form of magic. There's plenty of steampunk fiction that uses magic alongside technology. Why not use magic at the limits of what technology can do? Just as any good FTL in normal sci-fi (and indeed any good magic in normal fantasy) you will have to make sure that your FTL is defined to the reader through what it can do, not how it works. Make some rules about how your FTL works, stick to those rules, and that should be good enough. Launching to Orbit Steampunk rockets would have to be built out of heavy materials. The old joke about Russian rockets being built like trains is especially true here. There was simply not enough electricity available to create much aluminium. To minimize launch costs and keep in the steampunk style, dirigibles or balloons might be used to reduce delta-v to orbit. I believe this is the only way to launch anything heavy into orbit. Colony Construction If your other planets have a breathable atmosphere (or if your colonies have enough pressurized volume to hold massive greenhouses), perhaps the best building material is Bamboo. It grows fast, it grows strong, and it grows too much. It can be used for structural support for your metal habitat walls, as rails for steam trains to run on. (in real life there were designs for logging locomotives that ran not on rails, but on logs.) They could even be used as structural support for various machines and devices. Bamboo may not be aesthetically very steampunk, but it is practical. Certainly much more practical than towing along all the building supplies with you, as more than ever in a steampunk universe, "every gram counts." On the subject of trains and railways Steam locomotives and railways could be very valuable on a steampunk colony, just as they would be anywhere else when you don't have mobile cranes and road vehicles. Railways would necessarily be narrow gauge, so that the engines can be light enough for individual transportation. Steam engines would probably be transported to a colony in pieces, and then assembled on site, with a majority of structural parts coming from bamboo. That way only the most difficult parts to produce in-situ would be sent across the vacuum of space from planet to planet. No need to waste precious payload mass on running plates, cabins, and fuel bunkers. Rails would be, as discussed earlier, bamboo tracks. Switch tracks would probably be somewhat difficult to produce, however, but no doubt possible. Locomotives could be used for mechanical power and towing, using a system of pulleys to lift things. They could be used to carry supplies and materials around a base. If the planet has multiple colonies relatively nearby, trains could pull passengers and supplies between the colonies. ...And Horses If your destination planet has a breathable atmosphere(or maybe if you have proper space suit technology), horses could be a valuable tool. Compared to trains, they repair and maintain themselves and they replace themselves in the form of baby horses (as many multicellular organisms tend to do) and are decently powerful. They don't need rails (not they they would hurt). Problem is that their fuel efficiency compared to trains (which can be solar-boiler heated or hydrocarbon+oxygen heated) is abysmal, and they eat up your colonists' life support. An important thing to consider if the air and water isn't free. Other People's Thoughts If you have anything to add, please feel free to comment, and I will add it to the O.P.