Did you read the article? There’s no such thing as a marginal Mars mission.
Short summary: we don’t have a way to keep a crew alive in space for the 21 months that would be required to get to Mars and back.
And there’s nothing in the foreseeable future (the next 10–15 years) that changes that. How do you feed a crew for that long when getting food sent from Earth (like the space station) is not an option.
That’s one of thousands of major issues that need to be solved before even attempting a test of a Mars flight.
It took 10 Apollo test missions before Apollo 11 landed on the moon, a total of about 6 days total for the trip to the moon and back. (Of course every Mercury and Gemini flight was also a test for the moon but I’m trying to keep it simple).
A trip to Mars and back is nearly 1000 days.
It’s not gonna happen anytime soon.