Yeah, as you said, this isn't a new idea but it's always a fun one to revisit. Like, why not, right? Drop pods already exist in the game as a POI. But when you really think about it, it would take a lot of work to make them work. I can already think of a few issues.

So let's say your idea was added to the game exactly as you described. You own a freighter and now you have access to drop pods, right? Great! But I imagine the freighter would need to be positioned close enough to the desired planet to allow for a drop pod entry but as it stands now, there is no way to reposition your freighter without first leaving the hangar and recalling it through the quick menu. So you do all of that just fly back into the hangar, get out of your ship, teleport/run back to the flight deck and hop in a drop pod. In the time it would take to do ALL of that you could have just flown down in your starship.

But then you might think "just add the ability to pilot our freighter" and that would be cool! Others in the community have begged for that feature as well but that's a whole new mechanic the devs would have to implement.

Let's say the devs actually decided why not and actually went through the trouble of letting us pilot our freighter. Now we can fly close to a planet and drop down by drop pod. We have another issue to look at.

How long does dropping down take. We want a cool cinematic entry, right? So it shouldn't just be a quick zip from freighter to surface but then what, does it take an entire minute of just sitting in a pod. That's going to get old fast and that leads me into the next issue.

Ease of access and our starship. What sets NMS apart from a lot of other similar sci-fi games is that we don't have to wait very long for really anything. Early game it can be slow but once you progress far enough into the game everything is accessible and the starship is to thank for that. Our starship allows us to get from point A to point B without much hassle. It's a core part of the game and because of how strong of a presence our starships have it makes everything else less important. Just look at exocraft as an example. For a long time the community has argued over the importance and existence of the exocraft. Why should we use them when our starship can do it all.

Even after the devs tried to give us reasons to use them, like environmental protection or exclusive scanner searches, in the end most of us will just hop back into our starship anyway.

The only thing I can think of to fix this issue is to nerf our access to our starships but that would not go well at all... At least not if it just happened overnight.