<ESA maybe..wants to go to Mars

Technology ready by 2025? The technology is available right now.

Building a new breed of solar system craft is easy.

Shielding the crew from potent cosmic rays is as simple as a few feet of steel augmented with some sort of externally mounted, nuclear powered, controlled high-energy adjustable, active field which disrupts the lower-level incoming rays.

Difficult engineering job but not impossible by any means even with current technology.

Advanced ion propulsion is feasible right now.

It's all just cost. Make the ship big enough so that they don't have to recycle their own urine or some other disgusting stuff. Put in a huge water tank. Recycle the showering water.
(Showers? Yes! - full artificial gravity!)

Cheap Mars is foolish, especially if it ends up causing a fatality or illness, which could throw back manned exploration in the same manner the Challenger explosion setback space efforts. Spend the extra bucks necessary to do it right and much safer - also aid and abet the mental state of the travelers and make it a PR tour de force.

While I would not hire actors to accompany the crew - I would indeed make an effort to pick astronauts which are photogenic and with charismatic personalities.

This will simply insure manned space continues to get funding and the media can make lots of money on the venture - insuring media push for more manned missions.

SDAI-Tech1