Current technology will always look archaic from the future, I hope in 20 years we get to say something like: I can't believe we didn't build our spacecraft out of some kind of super space crystals!

I see things like the Apollo program as a massively expensive (and yes, wasteful) R&D program. Private space corps, unless they reach some kind of massive scale, will have a hard time justifying throwing enough money at something for real innovation. They will continue to focus on getting satellites up there a bit cheaper than the other guy.

The reason people (geeks especially) love to rah-rah the space program is because it is a wonderful form of waste. Instead of bailing out a corrupt financial system, or spying on it's own citizens, or building some kind of doomsday weapon, we could have our Star Trek fantasy and maybe find some really cool innovations while we are at it.