Yes, there was nothing they could do after it reentered orbit. But before?
DUH!
They have only said about a 1000 times that the shuttle had neither the fuel to reach the Space Station nor the air to wait for a rescue.
Keep in mind that preparing for a space flight is not like packing the trunk of your Toyota. If they started today and had a rocket available and unfueled, it would take weeks to launch an unmanned rescue rocket with the appropriate gear. If, like the Russian rocket, the rocket was already fueled, it would take even longer, since it would have to be unfueled, before changing the payload - that is unless you want an even greater disaster on the ground.
Also, keep in mind that space and weight are at a premium on the Shuttle. Considering the significant size of EVA equipment (that must be kept in the crew compartment) it's not suprising that they would leave it out, since it would make room for several more experiments.
Furthermore, even if they had done a space walk, the only positive purpose that it would have served is to give us a better idea of what happened, after the breakup, since, as I pointed out above, they had neither the fuel to reach the Space Station nor the air to wait for rescue. Repair or rescue was not an option. On the other hand, if they had done a space walk, as you suggest, it would have had one other very undesirable effect. Instead of feeling triumphant until the last moments of their lives, the crew would have been worrying about a fate that they had no control over. If you think that would have been better, then I feel sorry for you.
Personally, I can think of only one better way to go than as a hero, serving all mankind, with the whole world watching. That would be the way Bruce Willis' character, Harry Stamper, went out in "Armageddon" - i.e. saving the world in the process.
Those folks were heroes. They gladly did what they did, knowing that they were risking their lives. The last thing that they would want is to have the Shuttle Program suffer a needless delay as a result of what happened to them.
Not.
Do you work for NASA? Because you clearly have an weak excuse for everything and spend all your time looking for reasons why not, instead of why we could. Pathetic.
Heroes. Why? For getting the taxpayer to finance half a billion dollar joy rides to nowhere? For being the victims of antiquated technology and a bureaucracy that never learns from it's mistakes? For running useless schoolkid experiments? For becoming convenient matyrs enabling NASA to continue to waste money instead of building real space vehicles and getting us based on the Moon and Mars?
Heroes are our fighting men and women in the war. Heroes are the emergency workers on 9-11. Heroes are the passengers on Flight 97. Ilan Ramon was a hero for his piloting efforts. The rest were nice and intelligent people who lost the gamble that they weren't on the one in fifty flight that fails.