The big brother of
Hyperion was Pegasus. This bruiser could not only shove the
payload of a Saturn V rocket into orbit, but it could carry 170 to 260
passengers and their luggage to the antipodes in 39 minutes, which
shaved three minutes off Hyperion's time. That sort of margin is
all important in the cut-throat world of hypersonic transportation.
You also didn't need a launching
ramp, though it might take some doing to talk the city fathers into
building a fully-equipped spaceport to provide the necessary liquid
oxygen, hydrogen, and blast-proof liftoff pads.
I'm also curious about the
designer's priorities. If you look at No. 2 on the diagram on
the left, you'll see that it's the flight deck of the ship. This
doubles as a rocket-propelled escape pod in the event of an
emergency-- for the crew. The passengers, one assumes, are left
to play "fisties" for the parachutes.
The big brother of
Hyperion was Pegasus. This bruiser could not only shove the
payload of a Saturn V rocket into orbit, but it could carry 170 to 260
passengers and their luggage to the antipodes in 39 minutes, which
shaved three minutes off Hyperion's time. That sort of margin is
all important in the cut-throat world of hypersonic transportation.