Why?
At age 2, Jesse Owens didn’t leap up and run a 10-second 100 yard dash.
We’ve got to take steps. We’ve been to the moon. We then go to Mars. Then Saturn or Neptune. Then out of our Solar System.
Explore. Advance. Improve.
Well, see, you've missed the problem right there. We went to the moon .. almost 40 years ago. Full stop.
Why did we stop there? It's really quite simple: the politics didn't support it. And the main reason why the politics didn't support it was that Apollo was essentially a novelty program -- once we actually succeeded in reaching the moon, there was no further return on the investment. Meanwhile, there were more politically compelling alternatives for the money, right here on Earth.
Explore. Advance. Improve.
Sure, but don't be stupid about how you do it. Space travel needs to find some mission that will provide a real return on investment. We don't have that yet, and we never will unless we can put in place some serious orbital infrastructure.
No, it's not sexy -- but infrastructure rarely is.
Oh, and please don't try the tired old "let private enterprise do it" canard. They're even more focused on "return on investment" than the government space program is, and there is no return on manned spaceflight.
The truth is that space is likely to remain a government-funded thing for a long time to come.
“Explore. Advance. Improve.”