The long-term financial gain will be the amount of money the European Union saves from investing in sustainable rockets and by extension cheaper launches, which also means billions saved for the taxpayers, and in turn frees up funding for more important scientific missions/investments via ESA.

The strategy is to be competitive against US aerospace giants such as ULA/SpaceX/RocketLab as well as agencies such as CNSA or ISRO. However beyond the brief mention investing in startups, ESA as usual signals that they want to place their eggs in the ArianeSpace basket as always.

Hopefully there is no endgame, as it implies them stopping after achieving their purpose. Which is eerily reminiscent of what happened after Apollo 17, when we packed bags and claimed one and done only to never return to the moon again.

When I first heard of the payloads which were flying aboard the CLPS landers I almost couldn't believe it. Peregrine alone is sending 6 rovers to the surface of the moon alongside several other experimental spacecrafts 🤯

That's called whataboutism