This is an interesting idea. I initially assumed you’d just structure your payload (eg titanium) to ablate during reentry. But maybe you can do something bette

This is an interesting idea. I initially assumed you’d just structure your payload (eg titanium) to ablate during reentry. But maybe you can do something better with carbonaceous asteroids, or simply with regolith, to produce a cheap ablative shield. I suppose the problem would be with the changes to aerodynamic profile during reentry - but perhaps regolith tiles could be manufactured to ablate in a consistent-enough pattern?