Would the steampunk
Enterprise be a steampunk submarine like the
Nautilus in
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea? There could be a goofy theory that the continents float on top of the oceans and the
Enterprise could sail under the wild west and drill or smash through the thin crust of the continent when it reached its destination, like a whale or the real
Nautilus breaking through arctic ice floes.
Or would the steampunk
Enterprise be a steampunk burrowing machine that tunneled through dirt and rock and would emerge at its destination making a big crater to annoy the locals?
Or would the steampunk
Enterprise be a steampunk landship?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landship
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0604041h.html
Or would the steampunk
Enterprise be a steampunk airship? Like a super large and advanced Zeppelin decades earlier? It would probably have to use hydrogen in the gasbags which would call up images of the
Hindenburg. But on the other hand the hydrogen filled Zeppelins that bombed Britain in WWI were highly resistant to bullets from AA guns on the ground and from tiny fighter planes. The tiny holes made by bullets caused tiny leaks that weren't worse that the natural leaks anyway. It was only the invention of (extremely) incendiary bullets for airplane machine guns that caused the idea of using Zeppelins as bombers to be shot down in flames, along with some of its leading proponents.
An airship
Enterprise that was anachronistically as advanced as the LZ 127
Graf Zeppelin or more so could have completed its five year mission in the weird wild west without being destroyed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_127_Graf_Zeppelin
Or would the steampunk
Enterprise be a steampunk ship-sized heavier than air vehicle? Like the
Albatross in
Robur the Conqueror.
https://www.google.com/search?q=the...9uzZAhWrmuAKHXg8ATsQ_AUICigB&biw=1920&bih=949