when coming back from space, why do astronauts don’t just use a parachute all the way down?
In: Engineering
First, you need to brake – orbital speed is like permanently „falling and missing the ground“. By braking you manage to hit ground. That is something a parachute won’t manage in „empty“ space in a reasonable time. Up there is just not enough, almost none, air to slow you down.
Then you are still traveling at HIGH speeds. Take a look at the latest starship „landing“. That rocket was not fully orbital, yet it was so fast everything, that was not perfectly prepared, started burning and melting. (Not by friction but by compressing the air in front of it)
A human would not survive that, you need a capsule.
And finally, when you take a look at Baumgartners jump from space (stationary in a balloon, not in any orbit with lateral speed), you will see that there is still not enough air at that relatively low height to control your own rotation. He started spinning an there was quite some risk that he would lose consciousness because the spinning got too fast.
TLDR; They don’t work in space, they and the body would never survive the reentry heat, manual control of reentry would be quite hard.
Edit: *break – no idea what autocorrect did to me here!
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