Yeah, like they did in getting Apollo 13 back, right? Sorry, but people, especially the type they send into space, do their best work when they are under pressure. Its when the pressure's off that they screw up.
If anyone in authority had any second thoughts about the safety of bringing the Shuttle back into the atmosphere, they had a duty to do everything they could to make sure that what happened didn't happen. If that meant getting another shuttle ready in a week then they should have done it. They knew of the problem on liftoff. They had more than a week to get Atlantis ready with a crew of 2 experienced pilots. They could have done an up close visual inspection and if it didn't look good they could have loaded everyone into Atlantis.
Just because nobody had ever done a rescue in space does not mean that it shouldn't be tried. Indeed I bet the next few shuttle flights will be strictly rescue training exercises. Wanna take that bet?