It is pretty easy to learn the difference in this with a very basic rocket in kerbal space program. Launch up and you'll come down near where you started, in a parabola... Launch up and then go sideways to gain orbital velocity for a long time, you're in orbit.

Agree, KSP is a great way to internalize how orbital mechanics work. After playing it a little while, everything clicks and things become natural, like the sort of physics one uses playing billiards or building block towers.

In this case it would have been barely possible to do a land landing, but the margin was much larger for a barge landing (since the stage doesn't have to return all the way to the launch site, which takes quite a bit of fuel). In the end it doesn't really matter, though. The cores that land on the barge just take a few days longer to return home.

Droneship landings are particularly convenient for west coast launches, as they can unload them ~20 miles from the factory (which is where they are refurbished, for now at least).

Relevant (what-if)xkcd: https://what-if.xkcd.com/58/