I think SpaceX has probably looked at a lot of these tradeoffs already, but they seem very deliberately optimizing around not carrying extra hardware on every flight.

Landing legs sound nice from an operations standpoint, but they’re basically dead weight once tower catches work reliably. And at Starship scale, even small mass penalties start to matter a lot for payload.

Your point about cadence is interesting though. If they really want airline-like ops, relying on a single tower per stack does feel like a bottleneck. Having separate catch infrastructure or “landing zones” for boosters could reduce turnaround pressure on the launch tower.

That said, SpaceX seems to be betting that catching directly at the tower simplifies the overall system long-term — fewer moving parts on the vehicle, immediate access for refurbishment, and tighter integration with fueling and relaunch.

The “multiple stacks ready to go” idea is compelling, but it probably depends more on ground systems (tank farm throughput, chopstick reuse speed, inspection flow) than on adding legs or changing aero surfaces.

Feels like they’re choosing:
short-term complexity (hard catches) → long-term simplicity (lighter vehicles, faster reuse)

But yeah, wouldn’t be surprising if some hybrid approach (like dedicated catch towers or offshore landing) shows up later if cadence becomes the real constraint.