...sure look like scaled down version of Larry Niven's Ringworld!

The Exploration of Space. In it he talks about a timeline for colonizing the solar system and the first 100 years are mostly robotic missions. So we seem to be about on track considering he wrote it in 1951.

http://archive.org/details/TheExplorationOfSpace

The US has the capability to put people in orbit utilizing SpaceXs Falcon/Dragon platform, its just not NASA sanctioned to do so yet.

Based on design and performance to date the Falcon launch vehicle is way ahead of anything in its class. It had to shut down an engine mid-flight and recalculate orbital parameters in real-time for a nominal insertion. Consider me impressed!