Jacob,
Having been on Earth while the Moonlandings took place and understanding what they meant, I'm not that impatient anymore.
Even if we ever go to Mars, it won't be the first time a human stepped on another world.
That's a large part of the reason why it won't happen anytime soon.
Before having landed on the Moon, our satellite was the place to reach mainly because it's there.
Because we saw the Moon so often and yet, before, we never had been there.
Being there the first time meant much much more than exploiting it, taking advantage of what there is.
Mars cannot be aimed at for the same reason of being there for the first time. There must be reasons to go there and they are not strong enough to motivate the decision makers.
Reasons for returning back to the Moon aren't appealing to the public, either.

And after all, if many of the HZ regulars don't appreciate the ISS, the Shuttle flights, the spacewalks, the ISS passes above their heads....it's their problem!

Between 1968 and 1972, the press, the TV news, the radios were writing and talking a lot about every single Apollo flight for about 3 weeks per flight, and that was all. As in 1971 and 1972 there were only 2 Apollo flights a year, it wasn't much. We had no VCR's nor internet.
Even people who were alive then didn't know about the later flights!

And now, every day of the year, every hour of the day and every second of the hour, there are humans up there in space!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yes, right now there are humans up there in space, which was impossible to claim during the Apollo era.

The grass is always greener tomorrow or elsewhere.

Raoul