Can't they do a few loops around the planet and skim only the upper atmosphere? always worked well for me on kerbal space program, haha

This is actually what is thought to partially have caused the damage seen previously. The new trajectory is supposed to just have a single heating pulse instead of two.

Aerobraking causes heat cycles. Expanding and contracting a material that already has "not large, large chunks missing" doesn't seem very prudent. Even before the evidence of deterioration, I'm not sure the safety culture at NASA would reach for that any time soon when a single high-temp event would work.