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Fish
Mammal
Reptile
Amphibian
Mollusc
Coral
Bird
Needless to say, not exhaustive.
Best Candidate?
No question, it is the Space-Penguin. An idea so obvious it disappoints me that they aren't more common in Sci-Fi. Their difficulty level is barely any higher than our own if they hand hands like ours..
After Penguins, a Dolphin-like race that had hands instead of fore flippers would be a great option.
At the other end of the scale, a Coral-like race faces a challenge several orders of magnitude harder than either of them.
So, let's assume that "Aquatic" means that it cannot be air-breathing like Penguins or Dolphins, or just operate on land like Amphibians, that they have to stay in water, and if they leave water, it must at the absolute minimum require wearing the equivalent of scuba diving gear.
I propose - for the sake of the argument by virtue of being roughly in the middle of the spectrum - to consider Space-Sharks. High coolness factor, generally oceanic (although given the presence of freshwater sharks, this isn't a hard limit) very intelligent. I propose they are also in possession of actual grasping limbs on the fore fins, and that Space-Shark society has moved beyond individual/confrontational basis to a cooperative group structure.
Stone age technology is quite feasible for coastal Space-Shark ancestors. But, stone is just the first step - in order to achieve space, you really need to move a lot higher up the technology tree.
In Humans, the way we did it was we went from stone to easily worked materials like bone, wood and pottery to tin or copper to bronze to iron to steel to advanced ceramics and resin-fibres, and fuel turned from wood to coal to gas to nuclear.
It is obvious that the transition is easiest by going to land; while undersea mining isn't unreasonable, the smelting process would be made much more difficult, and would likely have to be done with the limited control and dangers of using volcanic heat.
Fortunately, our Space-Sharks, while hardly comfortable on land, would be able to adapt and travel on land on a stone/wood level of technology based on wheeled supramersibles, in much the same way as Space-Dolphins could, although with more difficulties.
Once on land, they would be able to progress in much the same way we did, just with adaptations to suit them. It would likely take longer.
If you want to - irrationally, in my view, given it is no different to us building subs - impose that they aren't allowed to develop means that allow them to go on land, then the challenges are higher, although not insurmountable; the logical step is to develop a water-tight building with hydrolocks for accessing, then pump air from the surface into the building to create an underwater air pocket that is sealed against water ingress and can therefore be used for developing technologies otherwise not possible in an oceanic environment.
The largest problem is that initial getting to space; the requirement to lift water necessary to survival makes rockets hundreds of times harder than they are for us. Fortunately, rockets aren't the only way to space, they were just the first way we tried that worked; we have numerous ways that we know are viable today. Therefore, they will likely seek to use alternatives to rockets such as Linear Induction Motor Launch Ramps or Orbital Ring hung elevators. (so should we, as both are more cost effective than rockets are)
Overall?
An aquatic race faces more challenges than ourselves undoubtedly, but to outright claim it is impossible is to state that you have neither imagination nor problem-solving. Think "ok, here is this problem, how can we overcome the problem" not "here's a problem, therefore it's impossible".
What defines reality?
They would be able to also use that to increase the structural integrity of their ships too in a way, and upon hitting orbit the water on the outside of the ship would quickly either boil off or freeze giving them and extra 'shell' around the vessel to be fair, and, harvesting more 'atmosphere' in space would be substantially cheaper/easier as they'd only need to melt ice on meteorites/asteroids and not split the water molecules into their own component atoms to provide atmosphere
Like, does it matter? People are just having fun with some nerdy sci-fi talk and theory. We're not planning to take over the country and use our superior knowledge of aquatic science to propel ourselves into a new era of technology....unless anybody else wants to?
Seriously though. Getting so offended over nothing.
I see you didnt even attempt to look smart.
And you think there is no fire underwater.? Have you ever watched somebody trying to extingish burning light metals with water? And what about volcanism?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByV5-S712cg8Tk1vQWVFZVM5S28/view?resourcekey=0-f0n8tTyFknuKmWvLl6gYFQ
EDIT: Pages 28-29 talk about the aquatic species before they gain intelligence, but that's not really relevant to the post overall if you're only concerned with the possibilities of aquatic species becoming spacefaring.
none of those solution offer any possibility to make a solid foundation for industry.
heck even stuff like projectiles aren't that great in water because of high water resistance it would be unlikely that even with the tech they would ever try to fling themselves into space.
You don't necessarily have a planet with continents. You could have one with island chains, archipalagoes, small continents with many lakes and rivers, etc. So you don't have a problem where you need to evolve into something that never returns to the water.
It wouldn't be surprising on such a world that the dominant species returns to the sea to mate, maybe raise their young, where the winners get to spawn, and the winners are the fastest swimmers. Earth has plenty of species that are similar, if not quite that extreme.
And like every other evolutionary tactic, there will be cheaters ... so the race sometimes won't go to the fastest, but to the one that cheats the best. Those cheaters will likely be more intelligent, thus sending their smart genes to the next generation.
By and large, there is no predicting what evolution is going to do on exo-planets. We should not be surprised see all manners of strange things shooting at our landers. What should be surprising is to see any sort of intelligent species that looks like a human with strange growths on their foreheads.