I'm actually quite disappointed with the future. If you had asked me, as a 16 year old, if I thought man would get to Mars in my lifetime, I would have said yes. Now I don't think we will ever make it.
It is my belief that we have sunk into a period of technological stagnation, although we barely realize it. Much of the progress in the last sixty years has been in the (actually fairly narrow) field of electronics (especially digital electronics). That and arguably bio-tech (which has generally gone unnoticed). The developments in electronics have fooled us into thinking we are still in an era of huge progress but in fact the opposite is true. Going to Mars, for example, remains a huge challenge in the traditional disciplines of electrical and mechanical engineering, and our capabilities in these areas are barely advanced from sixty years ago. This is also why going back to the Moon is surprisingly tricky. Computing and communications advances are helpful, but there is only so much they can do to help us with big challenges in electro-mechanical engineering. Ultimately, you need a lot of smart people in one place designing air locks, propulsion systems, space suits, and a thousand other things. For some reason we seem to think its a lot easier now than it was in the 1960s. It really isn't.
Its quite a long time now since there has been a true breakthrough, outside the incremental improvements in electronics. Nuclear fusion as a safe means of generating power would certainly count. But it doesn't feel very close.
