I like your idea of imagining a future where space travel is everyday activity for some people.

I also like the idea of inserting as much as possible of the science that we understand today.

In the entertaining stories such as Star Wars and Star Trek and many others, it is assumed that the two problems, that we find very perplexing at the moment, have been solved.
One is the gravitational field that is difficult to escape from and the other is the atmosphere around the planet that heats the craft on its return from space.

What I would like to do is create a plausible scenario of how these problems were solved.
In other words, what type of equipment is needed to control the ascent and descent of spacecraft from a planets surface and through the atmosphere, naturally the same type of systems can be used to control the gravity within the spacecraft.
For that end, I would like to get feedback from the Zoners here to my ( so called ) solutions.

Since we are writing fiction the solutions will be imaginative, but they will still be within an area where the willing suspension of disbelief will work wonders.

Perhaps in the story, these solutions can be explained from the perspective of history, maybe a lesson to new space cadets, something like: The Chinese invented the rocket, the Germans improved them, the Russians and Americans used them to travel in space and then in the year 2009 the Zoners figured out what gravity is and how to control it.
And that is how we arrived to the point where we are able to travel easily in interplanetary space.
Our knowledge of gravity and space improved greatly, thanks to the Zoners, we had the framework to figure out that faster than light travel is not impossible, and such knowledge gave us the ability to explore other galaxies.

Comments?