Well chemical rockets are at a stage where all it needs is scaling up to get more power. But I do agree with you, the complexity and sizes needed makes you wond

Well chemical rockets are at a stage where all it needs is scaling up to get more power. But I do agree with you, the complexity and sizes needed makes you wonder why waste so much effort on some technology which has inherent physical limits in terms of energy derived. Why not spend that money and effort on accelerating other forms of propulsion techniques (like nuclear) within the same timescales? We need another Manhattan Project for space tech.