I am not an engineer, but it occurs to me that high-velocity aerodynamic flight is still a seriously difficult problem; and one best avoided if not actually neccessary. The resemblance to an aicraft hides the fact that it is something completely different at various stages of its flight. And in all these stages there are different problems that could occur, and limited experience of those issues.

Looking at it from another angle, configuration changes are often a source of problems.

So here the plane has two aerodynamic configurations, aircraft mode and shuttlecock mode. (Technically being carried is also one, and being a rocket vs glider is debatable.)

Now the wrong mode was entered at the wrong time, more precisely at the wrong dynamic pressure (altitude and speed) and disaster struck.

It'd be nice to avoid having to have such modes but with current power sources it's probably unavoidable to have some. Staging is a mode change as well. (If you were powered by say, antimatter, you could make the rocket a big stainless steel ball with just a powerful engine that could take anything and fly in any attitude, almost at any speed at any altitude without breaking up. Aerodynamic moments would be tiny.)

Airplanes also have mode limitations, like that you can't extend the landing gear at high speeds.