It's a perspective thing. We have incredible technology but at a loss of what to do with it. We had the cold war pushing us to achieve great things in competition but now we are stagnant. Our tools are too powerful and dangerous to wave around, we don't know how to balance investor and worker class wealth allocation, we can't seem to control anything about society that used to just fall in line.

As to what we can do in space: the value of reusable boosters is very understated. Why don't we have a manned mission to Mars? Because it takes a huge payload with lots of delta-V. Sending ten rockets up for orbital refueling was always a pipe dream in terms of cost. Suddenly it's attainable and the solar system is our oyster. It's still expensive, but we now have the tools.