the moon - Multiple aerobraking

I moved this question to more related : Space exploration

I spent a lot hours with Kerbal Space Program recently and I am courious about one thing.

I got into orbit of moon and then I was able to get back to orbit of "Kerbal" (the home planet in this game, similar to Earth) and land succesfully.

I did not have much fuel left, therefore I wanted to save as much as possible for anything that can happen during landing. When I was at my Apoapsis (which was as far away as moon) from Kerbal I used fuel to get my periapsis to only 50km, while Apoapsis remained the same. The trajectory was very "ellipse-like".

What happend? When I was aerobraking at 50km with more than 3000m/s speed, the apoapsis decreasing, while periapses remains almost the same. Then I was catapulted "back to the space", but with shorter trajectory around kerbin.

I did this multiple times and after some time, my speed at periapsis decreased to 2400m/s and after that, the apoapsis got as low that I stayed in atmosphere and landed.

The point is - I did not have to use as much fuel to get low orbit, I slow down a lot with repeating "slow a little with aerobreaking and then go again to space".

I am curious - why this is not used in reality? At least I did not hear about it. I am thinking that probably real materials do not take lightly "burn and freeze" multiple times...?