Interesting question.
Let us assume that you have some way to do a reentry burn (handheld
solid rocket?) so that you can lower the perigee of your orbit into the
atmosphere and that you could somehow unfold the parachute while still
in vacuum.
AFAIK, a body with a very large surface per unit mass sees the same
acceleration profile as a more dense body, just much higher in the
atmosphere. So one can assume a similar acceleration profile as with a
ballistic reentry.
You would feel the first deceleration much higher than ordinary
spacecraft, maybe at an altitude of 130km. The initial small
deceleration would cause the parachute to completely unfold. Assuming
the parachute and the astronaut survives further, you would see 8 to 10
gs of maximum deceleration.
The good thing is that you see this deceleration high up in the
atmosphere and that the kinetic energy of the orbiting mass gets
dissipated over a large area. One problem is that the feet of the
astronaut would be the first object to intercept the (very low density)
hypersonic airflow, so you would probably need a small (0.4m diameter)
hemispherical heat shield for the feet.
Another problem would be that the parachute would have to be so far
behind the astronaut that it does not intercept the shock wave caused
by the foot heatshield.
But on the whole, it seems possible that a specially constructed
parachute made of heat resistant material and a modified EVA suit would
survive reentry.
I hope that some day somebody will try this
regards,
R=FCdiger
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