It just seems strange that there needs to be an orange widget to act as a "landing zone" at all.
Why not park the heads hanging in free space? Ostensibly the plastic widget is probably a guide rail to prevent head crashes, when the head unparks onto a platter spinning at full speed?
There's a short whitepaper published by HGST (now part of Western Digital) which discusses the history and benefits of the ramp load-unload mechanism [1].
The heads (the one above and the one below the platter) would crash into each other if there is nothing to keep them apart, and then you could not put them back on the platter.
Why not park the heads hanging in free space? Ostensibly the plastic widget is probably a guide rail to prevent head crashes, when the head unparks onto a platter spinning at full speed?