I am having somewhat the same reaction as you. The can-do anything attitude of NASA is now, you’re dead, call us when it is over?
I wonder if that secret military spacecraft was developed as a result of this incident.
Without knowing all of the pertinent information pertaining to this incident, it is hard to formulate a way that the astronauts lives could have been saved.
That link described a possible patch and rescue approaches with probability of success unknown. Trying has to be better than not trying ... Unless you’re NASA and you are worried the whole world will watch your rescue attempt fail. Instead they would prefer to just watch them blow up. It sucks.