Was Ripley right to rescue Newt?
I was watching Aliens last night, and I've been thinking about the sequence near the end of the movie where Ripley, Bishop, and Hicks were aboard the second drop ship on their way to the Sulaco, but Ripley insisted on heading over to the fusion plant to rescue Newt. Was that the right thing for her to do?

As I see it, Ripley's primary goal at the time should have been getting a report back to Earth about this new and terribly dangerous species. Her secondary goal should have been saving as many people as possible.

Under this formulation, by trying to rescue Newt, she was trying to serve her secondary goal. But by doing so she put herself and the others in real danger, to the detriment of her primary goal. This would surely have been justified if the potential benefit had been great and the risk modest. But lingering in the proximity of a pyrotechnically malfunctioning fusion reactor could hardly the called taking a modest risk. And as for the benefit, Ripley was trying to save one life, not dozens.

Based on this, I believe Ripley's correct cause of action would have been to continue to the Sulaco, leaving Newt behind.

Interestingly, there was another scene earlier in the movie, where Ripley did just that. After the marines' incursion into the reactor complex, Hudson observed that the remote monitors worn by the sergeant and Dietrich still showed them to be alive, though they hadn't made it out of the complex. Vasquez was in favor of going back to get them, but Ripley argued successfully that doing so would have been futile. But then, neither soldier was a little blond girl.