"nothing" dramatic happened since the Moon landing.
Technologically a lot did happen since then. The ASC technology (Apollo Spacecraft) was rather rudimentary compared to the technology of the Space Shuttle and ISS. We live in space continuously today.
There is a good reason that after half a century we didn't go back to the Moon. Because there is nothing there to go back for. Deep inside don't we really know exactly the same about the Mars?
No, we don't. Because from the geologically and astrophysically point of view, both, the Moon and Mars are top goals. We still don't know everything about the Moon, and less than ever about Mars.
And the Mars is still a "next door neighbor" considering the distances and the amount of time to get there (near half a year). Colonizing either the Moon or the Mars is a nice sci-fi issue, but extremely far from any sane reality.
In 1492, when Christopher Columbus discovered the North American continent (although he was not the first one), there were no motors, no cars, no airplanes, less than ever computers, heck, not even bikes. It took more than 500 years until average people were able to take a plane to fly from Europe to northern America in less than 8 hours. If you would have told people about it back then in 1492, be sure literally every person would have called you insane. Not to mention space flight or even a flight to the Moon. From a flat earth view and sailing ships, we've made it into space or low earth orbit by 28800 kilometers per hour. From Otto Lilienthal (
http://www.glattpark.ch/grundlagen/infra_places/lilienth.jpg) it took nearly 100 years until we've had jet propulsion available. Space flight is only 50 years of age, and we already made it from Sputnik to the Moon manned over to a space station that houses twice as much as the Apollo spacecraft, well, continuously. Whilst the Shuttle is docked it houses more than 10 humans. Compared to Vostok and Mercury days, even to Apollo days, it's a giant leap only two and a half decades later (the last Apollo flight happened in 1975 and the ISS was being build on ground in the early and mid 1990's already).
Technological progess did never stop, nor slow. It is as fast as never before, especially computer technology. The difference just is that people are used to it meanwhile.
The laws of physics will remain the same for 50 or 100 years, or any amount of time.
Not inherently. In the early 1930's Albert Einstein for example was convinced that providing electricity by something like nuclear power (back then it was just a theory) is impossible because "
you have to force atoms to do that". And, indeed, we forced them. He also was wrong about quantum physics (coincidences do exist indeed). Lord Kelvin, a British mathematician and physicist claimed in 1895 that "
heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." Simon Newcomb, a Canadian mathematician and astronomer, said that "
flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible." This was just 18 month before the Wright Brothers took off. Today we fly with aircraft made of metal, which are more than 400 tons of weight. And this with a speed of more than 800 kilometers per hour. Open up the graves of Lord Kelvin and Simon Newcomb to show them what's possible. But be sure they'll suffer a direct heart attack
The nearest next solar system is over four light years away and we don't even know whether it has any planet around it.
Back in human history, foreign continents were unreachable, at least not within month, while the majority of humans thought that the earth must be a flat thing
The light, as we know, travels 300,000 km/sec. The Apollo didn't reach 20 km/sec.
Well, the first steam locomotives didn't even reach 50 km/h (0,014 km/s), and some scientists and doctors back then claimed the acceleration would be "too fast" for the human body...
By the way, in 1936 the New York Times wrote that "
a rocket will never be able to leave the Earth's atmosphere."
And only 32 years later a rocket put three men within their spacecraft on a course to the Monn for the first time (Apollo
.
Keep two things in mind:
1. The future is not foreseeable
2. Most predictions (except predictions of visionaries like Wernher von Braun etc.) about the possibility of technologies and about the future, were always pretty much wrong
