Indeed, my doctorate is in political science; I couldn't hack astrophysics, I learned as an undergrad.

Funny you should mention that, though. I'm in DC this week, and spent this morning in the geology section of the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History. They have an EXCELLENT exhibit. Many geology exihbits are set up as if to teach mineral recognition, but theirs starts with the formation of planetary bodies and walks through fundamental geologic processes like impact, plate tectonics, volcanism, sedimintation, with appropriate rock samples to illustrate. Makes tons of sense. Among the displays was one on the stucture of oceanic crust, built on a foundation of gabbro.

It was also neat to see half a dozen fist-sized moon rocks (!!!), as well as having the chance to touch a bit of Martian basalt (a thin slice of the Nakla meteorite).

As for the drill project, my sense is this is a nice engineering accomplishment, but nothing new scientific. That is, we have observed intact sequences of what we think is oceanic crust on land where chunks have ended up getting thrust onto continents, and we've drilled into the ocean before too. But, this is the first top to bottom section of intact ocean crust. They found nothing surprising at a fundamental level, but if they had found something that contradicted what we've inferred from samples obtained on land, etc., that would have been big. so worth doing just to be sure, I guess.