Given the high cost of every pound when launching things into space this seems at first glance to be a pretty lousy idea. It seems to me solving this problem through diplomatic channels would be a much better plan given the fairly low probability of this event.

Space shuttle cargo was something like $20,000/pound. If each astronaut needs a pound of paperwork for contingencies (which seems like a vast overestimate) then that's $20,000 each, which is tiny. And the marginal cost per pound was small. Given that you're doing a launch anyway, you're probably not exactly at the mass limit, so a few extra pounds of paperwork costs almost nothing.

The problem has been even more economically solved by cancelling the shuttle

Note the '[citation needed]' - I think that text comes from the publisher's comments in the book. If so, well, publishers aren't known to be scrupulously honest.