We will get out there, someday.
I don't think we are technically farther from Mars.
I think we would have had a lot of lost missions and asatronauts if we had gone earlier. Not that we should shirk from exploration because it is dangerous.
But, I think we would have had disastrous results if we had goone earlier. It is far more dangerous than Heinlein or Clarke make it look.
The run of luck NASA earned during the 60's had as at least a component the fact that there were not very many launches.
The space environment truly is aggresively dangerous.
And it is fiendishly expensive to do much of anything in space.
While I desperately want to see us doing much more in space, I have a sinking feeling that we are doing about as much as we can with the current technologies at hand.
Ed