Laser retro-propulsion seems interesting for landing space-mined materials on earth. The obvious (to me) way to do that is to wrap the mined material in a vague lifting-body shape of metal or maybe just slag, thick enough that after it ablates away there's still enough to be economical (to be clear there's at least a couple major options: high value payload wrapped in low-value vehicle, or big aerodynamic blob of low-mid value material, with more options in between). But if you have a big laser you can shine at it to slow it down, maybe you could get away with a lot less sacrificial material.