Marz

Frankly, it's already in the game. You should limit your thrusters. You can change the throttle of solid boosters. If you are going too fast, and try to turn (I think) your center of gravity is too high and its like trying to push a truck with a rope, it just won't work. Slow down and that center of gravity will be a little further down and much more manageable. You won't go as fast as quickly, but you'll still get there in the end. You can also just mass solid boosters together, it works really well but you can't turn at all. Not quite as fun but if you just need to get out of the atmosphere it works. Its not quite like it was but 1.02 is a better version IMO. 1.04 changed a lot with atmospheric density\pressure. I don't know the exact numbers but it's significant, very significant. There might be mods that change it back, I don't know. I haven't looked.

Having a similar problems. Parachutes break off when just re-entering with just the command pod making it impossible to retrieve science. If I leave just a fuel tank and rocket on, it makes it through the atmosphere and I can deploy the chute. In 1.02 this was working fine and I could capture the command pod and get the science credit for it. Tried the same in 1.04 and the command pod just wouldn't slow down enough to land safely, it would crash going 40-50m/s every time where the same exact configuration(while reducing the re-entry heat so I can actually survive re-entry without extra heat shields since they don't come till MUCH later), same ship save, same situation would slow to 6m/s under 100m on 1.02. I don't know, something seems off in 1.04. Might be the save conversion. Noticed in 1.02 the parachute would deploy at 500m but in 1.04 they deploy at 1000m. Thinking if you have a ship save from before, it will hold those old version default values for parts and not accept the new version values but I never got to check. Drag, or atmospheric density or something also seems to have changed drastically in 1.02 to 1.04. In 1.04 I can hit over 9000m with just a single RT-5 solid booster but in 1.02 I can barely even hit 4500m. While that's great for getting out of the atmosphere, its extremely deadly for re-entering. You just don't slow to terminal velocity falling through the air any more, or at least not quick enough. I think I'm going to stay at 1.02 for a while since 1.04 sacrifices fun for "realism". While it does seem like it would be more rewarding, if I spent days upon days trying to get something that can survive re-entry, its just not why I originally bought KSP.