I struggle to understand the point of this. It is totally ‘been there done that,’ unless the idea is to do it again with much more high-definition video footage this time, or something.
Mars be waiting.
What the hell are you talking about? No disrespect to Chronos, but I’m talking to a smallish-town middle-school substitute math teacher. Who–judging from that comment–knows exactly jack shit about what can be learned from lunar rocks. THESE are genuine scientists in the relevant field:
Moderator Note
This is basically attacking the poster and not the post. Saying “No disrespect” does not negate this. You can easily refute the point without adding the commentary about your opinion of the poster’s knowledge, as you did with the articles that you linked to.
Dial it way back, please. Focus on the post, not the poster.
To be clear, I didn’t say that we’d learned all that we could about the Moon; I said that we’d learned all that we could from moon rocks. And to be even clearer, I should have clarified that I meant that we’d learned all that we could from bringing moon rocks back. New analysis techniques could be applied to the rocks we already have.
Now, we could learn more by, say, drilling into the surface, to recover samples from deep below. That’d give us a new source of information that we don’t have from the current samples. But that’s not what China is planning on doing.
And further, when people talk about all of the spinoffs from the Apollo program, they often miss the most impactful one: It got kids excited about science. China’s mission, even if it doesn’t have any direct scientific benefit, will still do that. That’s why I said that I 100% supported it.
Hmm…
When Apollo brought lunar rocks in the 70s the scientists have found out that the rocks are similar to granite. It is very rare on the Moon, but quite common on our planet, so I don’t get why NASA pays someone for these rocks and why the lunar soil is so special.
There are two main types of lunar rocks–basalt (the dark areas) and anorthosite (the light areas). Neither of these should be taken for granite.
As for why study them, here is the tip of an iceberg for you.
I suppose that pun was inevitable, but still, there will be punishment.
As far as the Chinese rocks, yes they will help advance our knowledge of the Moon and perhaps the solar system in general. The more different locations we have samples from, the better our understanding becomes.
Hey, NASA has advanced to bringing back asteroid rocks:
When I read the thread title I thought China was trying to take our moon rocks back to the moon.
Thank you for taking the time to give me the answer. I have checked the articles you sent and you are right, the rock from the Moon is a valuable resource to take experiments, but still, I don’t get why NASA pay someone for these rocks 
From PopularScience: NASA still has around 85 percent of the Apollo program’s lunar sample collection. “These samples were deliberately saved so we can take advantage of today’s more advanced and sophisticated technology to answer questions we didn’t know we needed to ask” Here we see the irrational waste of money taking into consideration that NASA’s budget is limited.
Hey, some of us appreciate gneiss geology humour.
We’re KREEPy that way.
Do you get that the existing NASA moon rocks are from very limited locations? It would be as though I sampled a literal handful of rocks in Central Park, chipped a piece off Devil’s Tower, and pocketed some some sand from Miami Beach and then declared I now had a comprehensive picture of US geology.
More is better.
Is it even necessary? We are regularly impacted by objects from outer space, and some of them are from our very own asteroid belt. Though not as reliable or as fast as Amazon Prime, the Asteroid Belt does have a delivery service. 
Yes it is. Entering the atmosphere and landing on Earth modifies and contaminates meteorites. Getting them straight from the source avoids that.
Plus you may be sampling different parent bodies than you get from the current crop of meteorites. (Sampled bodies changes over time.)
Yes. At least from a scientific point of view. By the time we recover bits from the asteroid belt here on earth, they have been heated just a tad by their entry through the atmosphere, and have also been contaminated upon landing. The contamination issue is solved (a bit) when we find them on the ice sheets in Antarctica, but not by much.
NASA lent Biden a moon rock for the oval office