As this year was mostly bad news, I wanted to share a bit of positive news. The first mission to collect samples from the moons surface since 1976 (more than 40 years ago) started successfully a few hours ago. If everything goes fine, soon the scientists will have a bit more fresher moon rocks to analyze. The start was live streamed on youtube. The liftoff starts around 54:00.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vppYWohS67I

More about the mission on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_5

UPDATE: Now we have images from the landing and drilling:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OB-XVNyT1Lk

Are we sure they're not just going there to build new concentration camps?

First answer and the technical progress of humankind is reduced to nationalistic politics. Not completely unexpected, but I am so fed up with this shit. *sigh*

Can't we just be happy, that technical ingenuity brings new successes in space travel that didn't happen since the 70s? We recently had successful Mars-missions, a first mission to a comet, a new space travel capsule that allows the ISS to operate again with full capacity, a first mission to the backside of the moon. Can't we just enjoy these successes, without dragging nationalities into that? Does it really matter which skin color and eye shape the engineers have?

EDIT: Sorry to rant at you this way, I know you only made a joke.

Scientifically speaking most project certainly are bringing more than just bragging rights, although a lot of the science progress is not directly relevant for everyday life.

The engineering involved in this is certainly a different number. While we don't directly benefit from rocket technology, for space travel a lot of small technological developments have to be made, many of which flow back as experience into earthly tech.

And you can argue, that satellite technology already strongly impacts our lifes. The one person they have as guest for commenting said in the livecast, if we shut down space infrastructure for just one day, a lot of stuff would stop working, from communication over navigation to weather forecast and soil analysis. Now, a moon mission isn't bringing any satellites in earth orbit, that is true. But looking back, as the first satellites were shot into space, nobody thought about communication, navigation or earth observation satellites, yet they were a product of this. If we look into the future, we might be able to use moon resources like Helium-3 for energy production.

About the costs - I can't find anything for the budget of this mission, but I find that CNSA (Chinese National Space Administration) has an annual budget of 11 billion US$. That is certainly a lot, but dwarfed by military expenses which are 177 billion $ each year. For comparison, the NASA has a yearly budget of 22.6 billion $ and the USAF has one of 738 billion US$. So, if each country halves it's military, it would free resources that are way bigger than anything we pay for space travel. So I think Defund the Army is way more useful than Defund the Police.

This might be a controversial opinion but torturing humans isn't a political issue. Human achievement shouldn't be celebrated if it's built on dead bodies. How nice it may be, it should absolutely not distract from bigger issues. I didn't drag human lives into this, they did and we should not forget. Not even for generally positive things, because that's what the dictators want.

That is way too simplistic. While astronomy and astrophysics is the most boring field imaginable it still has brought us plenty of advances on earth and it will continue to do so.

It's wrong to say that the money is wasted. Scientific progress is absolutely necessary. The money to feed the poor is wasted elsewhere. Chastising scientists for using money for science instead of the poor is just like chastising the middle class for not donating to good causes. It's not their or our job to feed the poor. The money and manpower for that is elsewhere.

Don't worry we will get next generation GPS that Google or Apple will be able to track you down to the inch.

That's awesome! Astronomy is one of the most fascinating things to me. I love seeing news about it. 

It's nice to see space exploration getting a bit of traction once again. Even as a dick measuring contest between nations, as long as we get to colonize Mars and beyond one day it'll be worth it.

The moon is a stepping stone to the next real breakthrough; Mars.

Earlier this year NASA unveiled plans for a moon-orbiting space station, dubbed "Gateway", that will serve as a testbed for long-duration space missions such as reaching the Red Planet.

https://www.space.com/nasa-plans-artemis-moon-base-beyond-2024.html

As to how this benefits humanity back home, our long term survival as a species is dependent on reaching beyond the Earth. Our planet, at least in so far as it can support our continued existence, is finite and vulnerable. We cannot rely on it forever, especially the way we're going. We need to go beyond this one small island in the celestial sea and become a spacefaring civilization in order for humanity to flourish.

Most scientifical achievements came from projects that had nothing to do with it (Example: Antibiotics).

Not to mention that, for the more applicable scientific projects to grow, they need data and progress done in every field. Space will be an essencial place for humanity to thrive in the not so long future.