Full-flow staged combustion metholox engines.
Stainless steel construction.
Biggest rocket to have ever flown.
Highest thrust at launch of any rocket by a factor of two or so.
Live streaming of reentry via a space Internet network.
Etc…
Quantity has a quality all of its own.
You should be familiar with this from IT: there’s nothing fundamentally different about the first computer that I’ve ever used to the one I have right now, other than the factor of a million difference in performance!
Why not? With the capability demonstrated today, they can just as easily tweak the ascent profile to end up in a stable orbit outside the atmosphere. Their trajectory was suborbital on this flight on purpose.