The Mars Climate Orbiter crashed because some fuckwit programmer at Lockheed Martin programmed their tiny piece of software in freedom units, instead of metric like they were required.
My years of playing ksp says you should be firing the thrusters long before you open the chutes otherwise theyll just get jerked off the moment they open at high speed entry...
Drogue chutes are good too, especially for stabilizing a craft that really wants to make like a lawn dart. Using them I can make Duna landings with only a few seconds of thrust from a soft touchdown.
At least NASA had built an actual telescope and rocket during all those delays. Star Citizen has consumed hundreds of millions of dollars over the past decade and still doesn't have a game to show for it.