Compared to what has happened since space exploration began, being able to launch this many in such a short time is amazing, so just a milestone to celebrate.

Re number, SpaceX and Elon Musk have talked about 45k up to 100k in the past, but no fixed goal as far as I know. It may be less now with the V3 Starlink sats, but demand is increasing so hard to say.

The strength of the system is numbers. A mesh that can always be reached, redundancy, and throughput. Each one can only handle so much, so with more in reach, more load can be carried.

Hope that helps.