And you're over-generalizing a rocket failure that happened with one contractor because of a 40-year-old Russian rocket engine.
SpaceX (not Orbital Sciences, the one whose rocket failed) is steadily advancing the technology and reducing the cost of spaceflight. They have about a dozen flights scheduled over the next year, and most of them will provide opportunities to land a first stage for reuse. If they succeed, which they likely will on at least one of those flights, they will be able to gradually reduce the cost down to a tenth of what it is right now over two or three years.
Mars is more or less inevitable. Longer term, there's no fundamental barrier to filling the solar system with humanity. Even floating cities in gas giant atmospheres are technologically possible, although that's centuries away.
There was a lot of irrational enthusiasm during Apollo that thought everything would just automatically leapfrog to new heights beyond the Moon, but now there's irrational pessimism because of the "hangover" decades after the end of Apollo. Also, people don't pay attention to developments in this area, but I do, so trust me - you'll be seeing humans going places over the next decade.
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