I said this long ago in this very forum, I think more than once. It is not just a pointless time sink it would in reality be dangerous- the pad rotates so quickly it would make pilots and passengers sick and could hit bystanders not paying attention. It also creates additional mechanical complexity and space requirements that are totally unnecessary. I'd rather see 2-5 vertical stacked garages that are more narrow and would be a cooler animation sequence, the player ship gets dropped and pulled straight into the garage at a random level, and sees other ships come and go even while in the garage. But whatever, that would be neat but also unnecessary.
It was an early attempt at putting a process and feeling in place. A routine, because let's face it, one of the things that stays enjoyable in the game for so long is docking and landing.
Complaints about the "blast shield" (that was not protecting the landing towers anyway), actually did result in the delay for that animation being removed. I suspect the pad rotation might be a bit more work to get rid of. But yes, it should go.
+1 bump. Needs saying again.