research on Mars planet

I was reading an article on BBC website about the landing of Curiosity, a “space” rover. Well, I’ve thought “why do not turn on a debate about it”. So many times I’ve talked with friends or teachers or whatever about the space, the possibility to find life in very distant planet and stuff like that. I remember when I attended for high-school my astronomy teacher had been able to get me loving “universe subject”. For many years I’ve read a lot with patience and dedication and every time I feel like our scientists were far away to discover something; the years have passed and the research have made many steps ahead, for example we use now always bigger “ears” (radio telescope) to catch some extra-terrestrial signal, we have landed on Mars planet to study its soil with super technological machine-device (Curiosity) but until now it seems that we’ve been able to reach only short distance to monitorate the space around us and nothing more. Question: Did you ever think that we would have had to reach more result in “the space exploration” ? (sorry if i’ve done some error in writing ;) )