Thoughts......

Apollo 11 was mankind's greatest achievement....

Who know, perhaps one day, in the not too distant future, calendars will be reset into july 20 1969 as being day zero of year zero of the Homo Universalis era (luckily it didn't happen yet as we would have missed the year 2000 festivities;).....

It was so inspiring because it demonstrated what humans could do.

It wasn't about science, it was about technology and engineering.

Does science inspire? Yes, if it is relevant to most of us. Discovering exoplanets is more relevant than 0 G science.
But science isn't as politically inciting (or enticing) as engineering. Humans like to understand how things work and challenge laws of nature ?
Pure science has more room in international cooperations.
Engineering is the pride of a nation or a block of nations.

So, what can be done next, after having being to the Moon 40 years ago?
Discovering extra-terrestrial life ? Yes, but that's either right around the corner or thousands of lightyears away.

While technology is entirely up to us, our feat, our pride, our engineers, our diplomas.
Technology inspires us.
That's what Apollo tought us: "We can go to the Moon and do the other things, because they are hard".

Let's relive it and go back to the Moon with better means, because technology will help us do it. Let's set reachable space goals more for engineering purposes than for scientific ones. Mars can be an utimate-for-the-next-generations-goal but just as Apollo needed Gemini, Mars will need the Moon to be achievable.