Philae has landed

No announcement yet, but just now in the ESA webcast of the control room everyone stopped, gathered around a guy that I assume is the team lead, and are now going home. I have a bad feeling about this.

Gravity there is so low that something like a light push may be enough to launch. If anything used to examine the surface makes contact and presses (drill, digger), good-bye lander.

Firing the harpoon would also be enough to launch, but at least the hook would grab the surface and pull the lander back down, giving enough pull to drill viable long-term anchors.

It's interesting that you believe that missions like this must be justified by short term benefits. These missions are very fortunately not about short term benefits.

One of the initial motivations for this mission was to learn more about our solar system's origins by studying a comet up close. Many engineering challenges were also overcome in the process, which will lead to positive side effects for future space missions and related areas, but one of the primary scientific questions this mission attempts to answer is "why is our solar system the way it is?" Answers to that question will likely help us better understand our place in the universe, and possibly shine a light on other solar systems as well. Maybe even give us a better idea how likely we are to encounter life in other solar systems, and what that life might be composed of.

Ironically, compared to questions of cosmic significance like these, short term concerns like treating present diseases or improving the current economic environment are petty and irrelevant by comparison. These are issues that science and government can tackle on earth, and issues where throwing more money at the problem doesn't always help. It is a fallacy to think that because space travel requires money, that earthly needs will go unfulfilled. It's deeply short sighted, in fact.

Your comment seems to be rooted in a deep misunderstanding of the nature of science. Science does not proceed by first devising a list of improvements to human wellbeing that will result from an experiment (though the grant application process in universities sometimes encompasses this task--with a lot of handwaving as a result). Science is about expanding our sphere of knowledge. By definition, we don't know what will result, or if it will have a positive impact. But we are trying something that has never been tried before, which is deeply interesting, and which has the potential to greatly expand our knowledge of the universe. Science is fundamentally a research activity: you can't know in advance what you will find. Asking what we will find before performing the experiment is pointless. The "might find" category for a mission like this is enormous, however.

I highly recommend this video that explains how Philae works:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-77-Z_DHTlY

This is how all science has always worked. Peasants were probably upset once that nobleman would spend their money on playing with mould in glass containers(what good could possibly come out of it????), rather than buy them food or clothing, yet that's how penicillin(and countless other drugs) came about. Do you think every inventor in history had a crystal clear idea what they were inventing and how was it going to change the world? Think about this as our R&D department - it has to get some money to keep pushing us forward.

And not everything is done as a benefit/loss game - I would personally invest significant time and money into finding out how the universe came about, even if such knowledge doesn't do anything for starving children in Nigeria. However, the beauty of it is that you on the other hand can go and spend YOUR time and YOUR money on whatever YOU please. As for public spending - if you don't like it, go and vote.