I feel like if the Project Hail Mary crisis happened today, the response would be more like what happened in Don't Look Up.

I re-watched the movie a few months ago, and I had a similar realization: it was quite depressing to see a depiction of NASA that is now entirely lost to us.

Well I think the opposite.

Saving that one single person is great propaganda. Donald would definitely throw one million people under the bus in order to save that single individual

See the recent medicaid cut to make a few hundred billionaire friends happier/richer

My real wonder would be if the majority of Americans would okay the amount of money it would cost to save that one man?

Depends where the money is coming from. Military budget? Absolutely. Being taken from social services and whatnot? No. The amount of money that would cost could save so many more lives if it was used for things here. Choosing to spend it on saving an astronaut rather than on, for example, feeding homeless people and distributing medication and disaster relief is like a version of the trolley problem where the trolley is already heading for the 1 person, but you have the option of switching it to the other track to kill more people if you want to. I'd have a really hard time calling that moral by any metric.

If someone is left behind, he will die anyway whatever the amount of money thrown to his rescue. Mars isn't the Moon, it's a much more hostile environment, even just the journey from the Earth to Mars is a much more hostile environment.