@Owlor @catsalad very much viable in KSP. Unless you try it while landing in a liquid (landing on a liquid in KSP is more dangerous for crew than landing on solid ground if your craft is pointing retrograde, since although parts will only break on contact with liquid with a higher impact velocity, parts breaking on liquid do not slow down the rest of the craft, leading the entire craft getting apparently eaten upon contact, whereas if landing on solid ground only your engines and lower tanks will be destroyed and your crew capsule will survive - of course if you are in a nosedive and cant flip the craft back around, firstly you are probably going too fast to survive and dont have the ability to slow down enough to deploy parachutes, but in the very specific case where your parachutes are deployed but are at the bottom of the craft then deploying them over a liquid is a better bet).

@Owlor one of the Mars probes used controlled lithobraking, with airbags so it bounced to a stop