You need to know three things to assess Grasshoppers significance:
1) it is completely autonomous: current Falcon-9/Dragon missions fly ISS resupply missions completely autonomously without ground control. They are capable of autonomous docking, but aren’t allowed to do that because a minor fender-bender with the ISS would be Very Bad. Today, the Dragon currently approaches literally “within arm’s reach” of ISS, and stops, so ISS can grab it with its arm and pull it to a docking, but the plan is to allow it to do the whole docking procedure itself (with existing equipment) once it has better proven its consistent performance reliability
2) Grasshopper is intended as a development process of Falcon stage recovery. Remember how the Shuttle promised in the 70s to reuse its SRBs and main LOX/LH2 tank (the big rocket-shaped things that towered over the Shuttle Orbiter at launch), and promised that each Orbiter would be able to fly again in a month or so (allowing 4-5 shuttle orbiters to perform weekly launches at minimal cost), but never delivered on any of that in 30 years of operation? Well Elon Musk already has SpaceX’s launch costs cheaper than anyone else can hope to compete with, and is actively working on stage recovery, so that he can fly up to 100 missions per launcher with minimum rework between missions (which IIRC would slash SpaceX’s launch cost to under 3% of current prices) The first, second and third [when used] stage would each independently fly themselves back to a ground landing at a SpaceX base (no ocean recovery) to be refitted for relaunch, while its Hawthorne CA factory continues to manufacture 400 new modules/year: a Falcon 1 first stage is essentially one Merlin 1 engine/tank module, nine are multiplexed to produce a Falcon 9 first stage; 27 of them will be used in the first stage of Falcon Heavy, which is slated to begin testing next year .
3) McDonnell Douglas independently nearly perfected VTOL (Vertical Takeoff Vertical Landing) orbital craft with the DC-X Delta Clipper in 1991-95, until its test prototypes had the expected testing mishaps after several successful test missions, and NASA basically rejected it in favor of its own “in-house” Shuttle-like VTHL (Vertical Takeoff Horizontal landing) co-venture with Lockheed (which was abandoned without ever being completely designed, much less built or flown)
If you’re into such things, look into the manned Dragon variant. When NASA required a capsule safety system (to prevent Apollo-1 type disasters) everyone else wehn with old proven “launch safety tower” tech from Gemini, but the Dragon capsule was instead designed to come to a soft landing on any solid body in the inner Solar System on its built-in Draco engines (since that was on Musk’s To-Do list anyway) His system isn’t just a disposable safety system that is replaced after each launch, it’s an integral part of the Dragon’s entire flight profile: in a launch emergency, it can it can “escape to ground landing”; in a Shuttle Challenger type emergency, it may “escape to orbit”; and in the absence of any launch emergency, it can be used for a rocket-powered ground recovery landing as the normal end of a mission, instead of the Apollo-like ocean splashdown typical of other US orbital craft. (to be fair: the Soviets mastered parachute-based ground landings back in the 60s/70s)