Could an orbital spacecraft use a 'feathered' re-entry like space ship one?

Question

If it could what would this do to the requirement for such an extensive heat shield?

Answer 1

no
it does not really make sense. spaceship one just plunged back into the atmosphere. Any orbiting spaceship travels at high speeds, to have centrifugal forces and gravity working against each other, resulting in a state called 'microgravity' on board.
soo if you get something up there it needs a very high ammount of energy to accelerate to such a speed.
If you think you need to slow down and then plunge back into the athmosphere like spaceship one does it would require almost the same ammount of energy to bring the vessel to a complete stop.
This simply does not make sense, cause it would require onboard fuel to be a multiple at start.
Plunging back into the athmosphere does not really require heavy heat-shields so actually you would save some weight like this, but if you see the extra weight for the hughe ammount of fuel you would need to stop orbital motion the weight you safe for the shields becomes irrelevant.

Answer 2

An orbital space ship, like the Shuttle, is moving 18000 mph when it reenters. While Space Ship 1 is actually moving at 0 mph at its highest point. These do not seem like the same conditions to me.