I definitely have a five year old’s understanding of aviation and engineering but I’m envisioning a system in which the wings/tail section are intentionally designed to break away in the event of a catastrophic failure, and a parachute deploys to carry just the fuselage back down at a safe speed.
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Actually, we can’t get astronauts back from orbit with only a parachute. The astronaut would burn up on re-entry before the parachute slowed him down. Perhaps you’re thinking of aircraft pilots.
Aircraft don’t use parachutes because there’s an upper limit to how many parachutes you can attach to an object. This is a function of surface area and surface area and mass tend to follow the squared-cubed law. Mass tends to grow faster than surface area. In short, the aircraft is so heavy that even if you covered the top of it with as many parachutes as would fit the aircraft would still land hard enough to turn to scrap.
Also, when a pilot eject from an aircraft, that aircraft is usually on fire. No point in trying to save it.
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