Every "Gentleman-9000" steam robot comes fully-equipped with a top hat, cigar, and murderous spike-feet.
Aside from inspiring some pretty badass costumes, retro-technology mods, and deviantART sketches, steam power may serve an actual purpose in the near future: green energy.
This coming October, the USLSR Streamliner, a steam-powered rocket car, seeks to become the fastest steam-powered vehicle on Earth. The insane super-steam-engine it uses (appropriately dubbed “The Cyclone”) is creating new buzz about the feasibility of steam engines powering our normal, everyday cars for the first time in a hundred years (before the Model T ruined everything).
Like a big steamy banana
If 200 mph isn’t fast enough for you, steam is also being considered as a feasible solution to long-term, interplanetary travel. One major selling point being that in space, it’s easier to find and collect large chunks of frozen water (scientifically code-named “ice”), as opposed to crossing your astronaut fingers and searching for deposits of synthetic rocket fuel.
Sci-Fi aside, there are also several down-to-earth companies spreading the word about steam and its inherently green nature, most notably the Seattle Steam Company, which aims to channel excess power plant heat into useful, modern steam power and heat for cities.
Seattle Steam Cleaners, I mean, Company
At this point, if you’re saying to yourself, “yeah, but you still need to burn fossil fuels to get heat, so it’s not really that green,” consider the fact that steam only needs heat and water to operate, so recent advances in solar thermal dishes (which are basically heat death rays powered by the sun) in conjunction with new low-cost steam technologies could actually make for an entirely green and efficient source of power.
It's like growing a field of death lasers.
Whether this “new” power is used to fuel cars, heat houses, or propel rockets, like everything else in life: if it’s good enough for Evil Knievel to jump a canyon with, it’s good enough for me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go polish my brass-and-leather goggles.
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