Go, Virginia!
Today a Minotaur rocket successfully lifted off from Wallops Island, Virginia, and successfully deployed its payload. Woohoo! For the full story, go here. Given the overall abysmal progress we as a species have made since abandoning the moon in the early 70s, I'll take any small accomplishment as a positive step.

Personally, I want to see more exploration of Near Earth Objects (NEOs: asteroids, burnt-out comets, etc.) from an exploitation perspective. What are these objects made of (carbon-rich materials, can water be extracted?, valuable metals, etc.) and what can we do with them? Can we develop automated factories that can mine the objects, refine the metal, form it, and sling it off to an orbit where we can retrieve it? If a particular object has sufficient water material contained within it, could we develop a factory to refine the water and store it in tanks to be used at a later date for refueling? Could we tow an object back to Earth-orbit for resource exploitation or as a base for manufacturing? Could we rendezvous a probe with an object that would then deploy a solar sail and, ever-so-slowly, steer it closer? An automated refinery/thruster that would first generate its own fuel, then use this fuel to move the object to Earth-orbit?

If we want to ensure the continuation of our species and elevate the standard of living of the destitute without destroying the planet in the process, we have to get out there. We have to explore, we have to develop new capabilities, and we have to harvest the resources available. If you want to read up on the subject, I suggest Robert Zubrin The Case for Mars and John S. Lewis Mining the Sky.