Abandoning Mark Watney

In the book “The Martian” there are many situations where difficult decisions were made. In order to survive, the crew made a very difficult to abandon Mark on mars so that they could make it back to earth. This was the right thing to do if they would have stayed and looked for Mark they may have died in the process. When Mark was hit by the piece of debris his decompression alarm went off. Giving him less than a minute to live. That was a false alarm as we find out later in the book, but it was the information the crew was given at the time. The crew had a very limited timeframe to save Mark due to his suit becoming decompressed and the MAV tipping over. If the MAV would have tipped over it would have been impossible for the crew to evacuate, resulting in the whole crew being stranded on Mars. There is also a possibility that during the search for Mark another member of the team could have been struck by a piece of Debris. There was no alternate choice that could have been made. If the crew had a chance to save him they would have. While they were on there way back to earth they stumbled upon the Rich Purnell plan which is a way to save Mark. This was a dangerous plan. Commander Lewis says “ This is something that  NASA Rejected. We’re talking about mutiny. and that’s not a word I throw around lightly.” Even after being told that the whole crew unanimously decides that they want to go through with the plan. Most people run into similar situations where they have to leave someone behind for there own good. A time where this has happened to me is our lacrosse team worked every home chiefs game operating the concessions. Because Arrowhead stadium was so far away we would carpool. If someone would be running late to ride with us we would sometimes have to leave that person so that we would not be late ourselves.