We are all waiting for you to invent warp drive
(so hurry it up, will ya?)
I don't think that space travel will ever match up to fiction. Any more than owning a private plane could ever match the weekly adventures that Sky King confronted.
We may go to Mars, but I predict that 10 years later the buzz among enthusiasts would be how badly we messed it up. And how boring the whole idea had become.
My take on it is that we need to make each mission a success (not an adventure). That applies to ISS, too.