By the late 1960's Von Braun had come to favour nuclear thermal rocket powered expeditions, while Korolev's design bureau decided that nuclear electric propulsion was the way to go.

All such work stopped in both countries in the 1970's, after the cancellation of the Apollo program in the United States and the N1 booster in the Soviet Union.

Work resumed in the 1980's, led in America by private advocacy groups, and in the Soviet Union by Glushko, who saw the new Energia heavy-lift booster as the means of reaching Mars.

In the late 1980's there was even a brief 'Race to Mars', with both sides putting forward designs. This unexpected revival of the space race ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the scrapping of the Energia booster. Despite press enthusiasm, such a project never had any high-level political support in either country.

Despite pronouncements by a succession of American presidents that a manned expedition to Mars was a long-term national goal, there has never been the political will to provide the funding necessary for such an enterprise.

By 2005 NASA had funded a dizzying array of studies and iterations, all basically trading launch mass from low earth orbit for time and risk of mission failure.

No compelling concept emerged. The safest way would be for an expedition to Mars being the result of a robust space infrastructure (heavy lift boosters, aerobraking space tugs, nuclear thermal engines, long-term cryogenic propellant storage) already developed and in place. But there was no prospect of such an infrastructure being funded...

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Tempe AZ (SPX) Jul 07, 2005
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