Yeah, but it's all old technology. Launching rovers using plain-vanilla chemical rockets was first successfully done by Russians in 1970.
The first electric cars were made in the 1880s. Is Tesla Motors using old technology?
The Mars rovers use lots of new technology (the aerobraking system and "skycrane", to name one). NASA has certainly experimented with new propulsion technology like VASIMIR and ion drives, it's just that these are high-specific-impulse low-thrust platforms unsuitable for launch but good for maneuvering once in orbit. Not all aspects of a field will advance at the same rate. Compare processing power to battery capacity, for example.
"The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is planning ahead — way ahead. The agency wants you to email ideas for how "the Administration, the private sector, philanthropists, the research community and storytellers" can develop "massless" space exploration and a robust civilization beyond Earth."
This is beautiful.
"We are running out of adventures [...] the mountains have all been climbed, the continents explored, and the romance of sailing away on a tall ship to undiscovered islands is no more. What will fire the imaginations of the next generation?"
http://io9.com/white-house-seeks-advice-on-bootstrapping-a-solar-syst-1647619795