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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Astronauts have a lot of flexibility in their plans when the goal is “land from space”. Launch and landings tend to be pretty close to the ocean so that if something does go horribly wrong, you crash out at sea.
God forbid a regular aircraft suffer something so horrible and crash, but the last thing we want is MORE debris falling over a wider area in more urban settings. Crashes into cities are rare but they have happened. Mid-air break-ups are extremely rare but will result in destruction over a much wider area. Can we please **not** do that on purpose?
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