One great thing about capsules is that they can have a launch escape system on their top until a certain point during launch.
And upon return, a parachute slows them to the ground.
Returning back from space with a Soyuz has quite often resulted in tumbling cosmonauts, hanging upside down for long minutes and quite sick!
Yes, the return is rough, but there are other aspects throughout the Soviet-Russian space history.
Soyuz 1 was a failed test of the vehicle, because of the parachute.
Soyuz 11 was a decompression accident; the spacecraft came back intact but the cosmonauts were dead.
All the other incidents were serious but never catastrophic. Had it been the Shuttle, its complexity would have often meant much more serious consequences.
Soyuz 18-1 was a failure of stage seperation during launch.
Soyuz 23 was an unplanned ditching in water.
Soyuz 33 had a leak (some sources mention an explosion) and an auxiliary engine needed to return them.
Soyuz T10-1 was the only time the launch escpae tower was ever used. Needless to say, the Shuttle astronauts could not survive such an event with the current STS design.
Soyuz TM6 had a problem during the de-orbiting phase which delayed it by one day. It probably was a human failure, but the Soyuz design made it possible for the cosmonauts to cope with it.
And recently, the Soyuz TMA1 returned way off target.
And while in space, Mir knew a fire and a collision with loss of pressure, but survived them as well as numerous computer shutdowns.

Let's suppose the Shuttle program is replaced by a capsule program, at the moment the ISS is completed (completion might be decided much earlier than previously planned). What about the docking hatches for those much smaller capsules? This might determine their size, configuration and design.
No doubt such spacecraft will benefit from technology advances.
But even then, I wonder what would happen to the ET's and SRB's and SSME's; all dropped like the Saturns?
I hope not.

Raoul