Yeah that's an idea, a good idea but these 'spacecraft' are also flown as 'aircraft', flying down through atmosphere, taking off, landing again. Saturn doesn't feature in scifi because it is no longer hip and cool, but the rocket science is the most sound science for scifi because the Saturn, the Soyuz are all perfect flyers for getting from the ground up. The science principles which govern rocket spacecraft propulsion mean the payload is not lifted into space by an air-breathing engine. With the Rocket you force power down towards the ground and like Newton's law says the payload will fly in the opposite direction, the rocket also gets lighter and faster as it burns off propellant . But when was the last time you saw a good old fashioned rocket in science fiction ? I think in a Stargate episode they fired some anti-aircraft missiles at an alien Goauld ship but that's about all of it when it comes to realistic scifi. I don't know why the changed the spaceship in Babylon-5, they were great when they stayed in space but having a Star Fury fly in Earth atmosphere looks wrong, it is another one of those aircraft that would drop like a rock. The Konstantin/Tesla concept of Space elevator would be a far more plausible idea for science fiction.