Sad how little manned spaceflight has progressed since.
I strongly disagree.
First, we sent people to the moon nine times. We brought back something like 800 pounds of moon rock/dust/etc. At that point there's not much more to gain sending people there.
Second: Going to Mars would be the logical next step, but before you do that you need to seriously gain some knowledge and experience with having people in space for months at a time. To do that you need an orbiting space station. To really build said station you need a Space Shuttle. Then you spend YEARS in that phase. Which has been (and is still being) done.
Around the end of that phase you start working on your actual rockets/spacecraft that will be used for that manned Mars mission. Which has been (and is still being) done.
Going to the moon is peanuts compared to going to Mars. It's probably an even bigger difference than comparing a trip across town in a Model T versus cross country in an airliner.
Granted we probably could have achieved it faster if more money had been thrown at it, but going to the moon was a literal national priority at the time. Mars, not so much.
But ironically with all that said I think sending people to Mars in THIS century is a waste of money.
We're on the cusp of an age of unlocking technological knowledge at a rate the world has never seen, so in my opinion it's better to wait for the inevitable newer tech - because it's coming. Materials, computers, all of it's about to explode like nothing seen in all of history.