All of that at least was plausible, but the economic incentive for doing so never panned out. Access to orbit ended up remaining quite expensive until just recently (and it’s still expensive). 

We were not well served by 1970s science fiction, which tended to be overly generous in hand waving away near-impossible-to-solve engineering or economics or even physics challenges and may have grown up with expectations significantly disjointed from reality. 

So, yes, it isn’t actually being there, but there is hope that scientific instruments become so sensitive and computer simulation so good that your imagination can be well supported if you want to imagine being there. 

On Jan 9, 2019, at 9:50 AM, Catherine Berry <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

But I did expect that by ~1990 we'd have a permanent lunar base, a significant human presence in Earth orbit, and perhaps significant progress toward a crewed Mars mission.