>No sane person in the United States of whatever political party or creed would have said a rescue mission that had a reasonable chance of success was not worth

>No sane person in the United States of whatever political party or creed would have said a rescue mission that had a reasonable chance of success was not worth the money and risk. I think most of us have the sentimental and emotional content that we would want the rescue mission to go forward. However, if you were to ignore the feel-good effects, it is very difficult to argue that the mission would maximize human well-being. I only think it is an obvious decision with a failure of perspective. Let me try to characterize some of the considerations in the most approximate and non-rigorous manner. Ignoring the risk to the rescuers, let's say the cost of the mission is something like $80M per astronaut life saved. If there is 80% chance of success that is equivalent to $100M/life or if there's a 10% chance of success that is $800M/life. With big numbers, it starts to become a society-level decision about how individual lives are valued. What are the resources we're willing to devote to the rescue of a trapped coal-miner, the cancer treatment of a child with poor parents, a medical evacuation from Antarctica, or the rescue of someone who has been captured by pirates? One could argue that these astronauts merit greater rescue efforts, since they are spearheading humanity's exploration into space, but you could also argue that they are sufficiently sophisticated to understand the risks they were taking on. Let's say an aircraft carrier takes two days to meet up with a cruise ship in the middle of the ocean to airlift a girl with an appendicitis to its shipboard hospital. Does the $20M/day operating cost of a carrier count as resources spent on that one child? Probably not, because thousands of crew members are going about their regular training regardless of where they are, and carrier is doing its job of being some predetermined general vicinity. While the justification for the expense of those other goals can be debated, they don't happen to be an opportunity cost of rescuing that girl. On the other hand, the shuttle crew rescue mission would likely have been entirely in pursuit of one singular goal. The depreciation and consumption of resources could not be considered to serve other purposes. The salaries paid might be thought of as a transfer rather than a destruction of wealth, yet they too represent the efforts of a large work force of highly competent people not doing another tasks for that same pay. The other benefits of such a mission really are difficult to project. For example, maybe the value of additional capabilities that would have been developed in pursuit of rescuing the astronauts would have been worth it. Perhaps the feel-good effects alone would have been worth as much as anything else that we spend money on that inspires us. While it is the task of good leaders to divine when unreasonable expenses should be taken when the incalculable benefits are worth it, terrible leaders can be characterized as people who fail to have perspective and don't appreciate costs, and who make rash decisions without considering the implications.