As a teen it seemed to me that while my grandparents had seen man first fly and my parents (well, one of them) saw man go to the moon that our generation would see man go to the planets or beyond and our children definitely would. To me the true human tragedy of our generation is that we allowed the “forces of evil” to distract mankind with a useless, unwinnable “war on poverty” that squandered tens of trillions of dollars that should have been used to actually advance mankind technologically. We have allowed these evil people to chain mankind to this planet and THAT is a crime against humanity.
The fantasy of star travel is fine, but realistically, man will never travel beyond the solar system. We will never create a self-sustaining colony on the moon, much less on Mars or beyond.