Explain why the development of rockets has been the key to our exploration in space.?

In my opinion rocketry has not help us in space exploration past our moon, at all. Werner Von Braun had a wonderful vision and he got us to the moon but that is as far as rocketry will take us. The problem is we have allowed rockets to stagnate our thinking past them. We need a new type of very powerful unknown propulsion to get us humans to the outer planets and beyond. Take for example a bar of soap. There may be something out there, not invented, that will clean us a lot better than a bar of soap but as long as that bar of soap works then why invent something else? See where I am going with this? All rockets are, are very fancy Roman Candle's invented in China hundreds of years ago. We must get past them to move on to true space exploration. My opinion.