I wonder if an asteroid could possibly be soft landed on Earth. I mean, if it could be brought down to the surface without causing havoc with its impact and dust clouds. I've seen news about parts of satellites and rockets falling down rather intact without burning up in the atmosphere. What does it take to put something into a gentle fall like that from space? Is there a size limit? It's the speed which makes asteroid impacts dangerous, so my thought is to drop them down at minimum speed.
I imagine that some asteroids might not be so very difficult to move into near Earth orbit using gravity slings, collisions, reflected solar light, rockets et cetera. And if they could be brought down to the surface, mining them could be quite lucrative. If I understand it correctly, many valuable elements exist on the surface of the Earth only as a result of asteroid impacts, otherwise they've gravitated to the core of the Earth.
I assume that asteroids are very loose aggregates of materials, since they have formed under low gravity, so at least they should be fairly easy to take apart and drop down to Earth in smaller pieces once they are in low orbit. Or is the whole idea impossible or too dangerous?
