I still find it mind blowing that there was only 66 years between Orville Wright's first powered flight and Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon. The pace of development seems to have slowed since then.
The part I find really truly amazing is that in mid 1961, "state of the art" space travel (at least for the "free world") was a Mercury/Redstone that could loft one human ~100 miles off the earth in a 15 minute flight.
Just over seven years later, Apollo 8 circled the moon with three humans on-board. Of course, seven months later Neil and Buzz were walking on the moon. And it didn't take a shooting war to get it done.
Compare that to today, when the same country that accomplished that incredible feat in 7+ years will likely go more than 7 years without even the capability to send people to it's own space station
.