[Culonavirus]

Landing on the grid fins would be a really bad idea. Even though they're car-sized, they're not load bearing and "only" made of steel (not titanium etc. .. just yet). Starship's Raptors blast during hot staging is enough to bend them on the top. https://www.reddit.com/r/SpaceXLounge/comments/1g3bi7s/grid_...

[cubefox]

Though the original plan was indeed to land it on the (reinforced?) grid fins: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1344327757916868608

I actually think there is some old Starbase tour interview where a SpaceX guy implied it was Musk's idea, though I could be misremembering. Catching the booster kind of makes sense, since they needed the tower arms anyway for stacking and unstacking.

[m4rtink]

They need to be able to handle some forces but indeed likely not an equivalent of half or even quarter of the booster landing weight.