system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
[ELI5] If Astronauts can be delivered safely back to earth using parachutes, why couldn't the same technology be used to save a doomed aircraft?

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.
gpt
This one gets asked a lot.

Multiple reasons:

1 - planes tend to crash during takeoff and landing, too low to deploy a parachute.

2 - large commercial planes that drop out of the sky *drop* out of the sky, blown apart by some catastrophic failure or hostile action.  There aren’t many cases where a plane is sort of crashing.  Either they’re flying or they’re going down in a fireball of twisted aluminum and body parts.

3 - a 747 weighs 400,000 pounds, that’s a gigantic parachute you’re gonna need to haul around *every flight* for the 1-in-a-billion chance you may need it.  It must also be unfolded and inspected periodically.

4 - some light propeller aircraft actually do carry a big parachute, it’s just not feasible for a much larger, heavier, and faster jet aircraft.