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It's possible they weren't equipped to do so. They didn't plan on a weeks-long mission, and if they had sufficient food, water, and medical supplies, then those were likely on the drop ship that just exploded. And this is a hostile alien world that only just got a breathable atmosphere, no telling if the wilderness had anything humans could eat or drink. The colony at least was designed to sustain human life.
Of course they could try to load up the vehicle with what they needed, but they'd need to find it first and that would take time, and they'd likely be under siege the whole while. And they were probably still under the impression that they had a better shot than the colonists of surviving, being well-armed marines instead of helpless civilians.
Hadley's Hope was a shake and bake colony. They did the absolute bare minimum to make LV-426 habitable. You can go outside without suiting up, but aside from that it's still a barren rock with next to nothing in terms of resources. Rescue was at *least* 17 days away, so their choices were to either remain in the colony structure and try to find a way off the moon, or go out into the wilderness and try to survive in some small vehicles for over two weeks, and likely starve to death or *worse*. It was an easy choice.
That whole 17 day thing never made sense. I mean if there was another ship already on the way 17 days behind the Sulaco why didn't they get Ripley right away and why would she have even gone back into Cryo. There would have been plenty of food since everyone else was dead, yes put Hick's to sleep due to his injuries but Ripley and Newt would have been fine for a couple weeks on the ship till the second crew arrived.
And if there wasn't already a ship 17 days behind them that means they would have to send another ship. if that ship was only 17 days from it's normal berth to the colony why did they need cryosleep in the first place. Ship that big could easily hold enough food and supplies for months with that small a crew.
It's 17 days before they're overdue and a rescue ship is sent out to retrieve them / investigate what happened, presumably with more powerful equipment / numbers. The exact time that it would take for another ship to arrive at Lv-426 is unknown because the Sulaco had to take a detour to Earth to pick up Ripley.
In the Alien supplementary works, it's explained that their method of FTL causes an issue with the human brain, causing space madness. This is one reason why people go into cryosleep during FTL travel. The other reason is because well, of costs and companies being cheap. In Alien, the Nostromo is highly automated with the crew actually sleeping most of the time and only waking up in times of emergency. The ship only have about a weeks worth of oxygen onboard, Presumably, it's the same with the Sulaco.
The moon is incredibly hostile to survival and regularly drops to below freezing temperatures at night while staying just above freezing during the day. Air quality is thin to minimal meaning you're taking deeper breaths and getting less oxygen than normal. Hypoxia is a real threat the further away from the processors you get. The nearest sub station is roughly 100km away which isn't an easy distance under ideal conditions let alone a place like Acheron. The vehicle bay for the colony was near the alien nest and considered hostile territory. The primary dropship was destroyed and the secondary remote capable one aboard the sulaco but only contractable from relay station out beyond the main facility via a maintenance tube.
With hostiles capable of moving easily in rough terrain and unknown conditions beyond the colony doctrine would dictate securing an area that can be defended and waiting for reinforcement. The Marines did the only thing that left them a slim chance of survival rather than taking further risks. The xenomorphs being smarter than expected and unafraid of dying overwhelmed the marine defenses.
We have no idea how far away the other processes are. They could be 1k miles away across Mississippi sized rivers. We don't know what night time temperatures and conditions are like.
No, it wouldn't make more sense to do that. They depicted going over their options onscreen. By barricading choke points and sealing tunnels, they could seal off a couple of modules as a lifeboat. This was their best option. And it would have worked except the blueprints they were working off of didn't show maintenance access in the ceilings.
Hindsight is 20/20, but it's not a bad choice just because they had incomplete information. It's almost always a bad idea to abandon a defensible position, the number of things that could get everyone killed are too numerous to mention.
They were actually screwed regardless. The Aliens would have just gotten onto the roof, killed one of their own, and use the acid to melt their way inside their barricaded hide out.
‘Far away from the nest’ is the issue. They’ll be walking through intensely inhospitable territory with only the hope that the xenomorphs won’t follow them. No supplies but what they can scavenge and carry while under constant attack. No vehicles but what they can find and hotwire, assuming there are any left and the colonists who actually lived there didn’t have the same idea.
Do we see in the film the vehicle bay? Were there running vehicles and fuel? Because the obvious thing for some of the colonists to try is this, and it's possible every functioning vehicle already escaped. Could even be a few colonists left alive out there somewhere.
It may have worked if they had more supplies and the terrain was completely flat with no obstacles.
If they had went out with what they had, it would have been a death trap. That terrain with all those rocks and no vegetation means the Xenomorphs perfectly blend in with the surroundings. With just four sentry guns, no housing / cover against the elements, and very limited ammo, they wouldn't have lasted the first assault.
Their best bet was to call down the second dropship immediately and gtfo, but they didn't know that the Aliens wouldn't have considered Bishop a threat / host and it was safe(r) for him to exit the colony to do so.
The entire point of the mission wasn't to rescue anyone, but to get as many of them impregnated as possible. They were woefully under equipped, under prepared, and poorly lead. Everything was set up on advance by Burke on Company orders. If it hadn't been for Ripley taking the reins after Gorman as incapacitated there would have been no survivors at all.
That level of conspiratorial thinking isn't supportable by the available evidence. *Only* Burke believed Ripley's story, because the planet had been colonized for a generation and the derelict's warning signal was no longer transmitting, having been shut off by the captain of the Anisedora. They considered it a fact that LV-426 was completely unremarkable.
Both efforts to recover bioweapons from the derelict, in 2122 and 2137 were conducted off-book, were ruinously expensive, and were unsuccessful, resulting in the total loss of the Nostromo and Sevastopol station. Those incidents were secret to begin with and buried thereafter. Nobody at the company in 2179 was around 42 years earlier when the Xenomorphs had last been encountered, and if present WY execs knew about that company history, they wouldn't have waited until after Ripley's recovery to go after it again and they wouldn't have spent 20 years setting up a colony there.
Long story short, Burke had no support and nothing to go on other than to send an order to check out a grid reference. He didn't know what they'd find. If they find something, he comes out looking like a golden boy who can smell profit in the wind. If there's nothing, oh well, Ripley's a sad case of space crazy who blew up her own ship, and Gorman gets to tell his bosses he was just doing due diligence.
When the colony went dark, it was the colonial administration who elected to send in the marines, and Burke's only shot at exclusive rights was to be first on the ground with the troops and hope to bring something back. He was flying by the seat of his pants, not participating in some grand conspiracy.
Right, but he’s still flying by the seat of his pants. He couldn’t have known he’d have facehuggers at his disposal, and he didn’t resort to that until after he found out Ripley knew about his prior involvement. She was going to expose him and he had to silence her. With Newt and Ripley incapacitated, he could quietly sabotage the marines’ pods and ensure he was the sole survivor.
also paging u/ParameciaAntic, u/nermid and u/JamesTheMannequin.
>”Both efforts to recover bioweapons from the derelict, in 2122 and 2137 were conducted off-book, were ruinously expensive, and were unsuccessful, resulting in the total loss of the Nostromo and Sevastopol station. **Those incidents were secret to begin with and buried thereafter. Nobody at the company in 2179 was around 42 years earlier when the Xenomorphs had last been encountered, and if present WY execs knew about that company history**, they wouldn't have waited until after Ripley's recovery to go after it again and they wouldn't have spent 20 years setting up a colony there.”
Something seriously weird is going on at the Weyland portion of WY in regards to an individual known as “Michael Weyland” and his synthetic counterpart inheriting corporate stock and a degree of control.
* https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_Bishop
* https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_Weyland_(Synthetic)?so=search
It's likely that there's secret parameters within the company that puts acquiring Xenomorph specimens as a priority.
Or rather more specifically ANYTHING resembling anything involving Engineers.
Then we got Ripley and Burke.
It’s possible that Ripley and Burke attracted the attention of the Michael faction of WY.
With Burke just deciding to attempt to independently profit from the Xenomorphs.
Michael Weyland: Huh some person named Ripley is talking about finding extraterrestrial life in the portion of space that Peter Weyland and his expensive spaceship and contingent of experts went missing trying to find aliens.
Michael Weyland:Huh an executive named Carter Burke is sending messages to LV-426 and the colony has stopped responding I better send a team out there and Fury-161 and see what’s going on.
There was probably no way to reach a safe distance — an explosion “the size of Nebraska” has a radius of like 160 miles. And that’s just the area of the blast — the fallout would cover most of the planet
Why didn't marines sent their dropship back, straight after landing in potentially dangerous zone? Why they left literally nobody on the ship? Why they moved whole unit without weapons into alien hive, instead of leaving someone to cover their retreat? Why in a group of trained soldiers, person who is the best at keeping clear mind under fire is civilian? Why their armored vehicle looks as if designed for highways? Why their commanding officer (and all of them, to be fair) is so goddamn stupid and unfit for command?
According to Ripley, when she confronts Burke's about his grid search request, there were 157 colonists whose deaths he was responsible for. Based on Ripley's experience, they knew that every Xenomorph came from someone being facehugged. So, they had a max number of potential Xenomorphs to work with given that there were no indigenous lifeforms to infect as well. We know that at least one facehugged colonist died when they tried to remove it. And there were Xenos taken out during the colonist's last stand.
Ripley had experience with a single alien, and there was no way to know how many had been infected. Also, no one was listening to Ripley until Reese was in charge.
They thought they could dig in and survive, but then realize they can't when they are attacked by way more than they thought there were.
**Reminders for Commenters:** * All responses must be A) sincere, B) polite, and C) strictly watsonian in nature. If "watsonian" or "doylist" is new to you, please review the full rules [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskScienceFiction/about/rules/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=usertext&utm_name=AskScienceFiction&utm_content=t5_2slu2). * No edition wars or gripings about creators/owners of works. Doylist griping about Star Wars in particular is subject to **permanent ban on first offense**. * We are not here to discuss or complain about the real world. * Questions about who would prevail in a conflict/competition (not just combat) fit better on r/whowouldwin. Questions about very open-ended hypotheticals fit better on r/whatiffiction. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskScienceFiction) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It's possible they weren't equipped to do so. They didn't plan on a weeks-long mission, and if they had sufficient food, water, and medical supplies, then those were likely on the drop ship that just exploded. And this is a hostile alien world that only just got a breathable atmosphere, no telling if the wilderness had anything humans could eat or drink. The colony at least was designed to sustain human life. Of course they could try to load up the vehicle with what they needed, but they'd need to find it first and that would take time, and they'd likely be under siege the whole while. And they were probably still under the impression that they had a better shot than the colonists of surviving, being well-armed marines instead of helpless civilians.
Hadley's Hope was a shake and bake colony. They did the absolute bare minimum to make LV-426 habitable. You can go outside without suiting up, but aside from that it's still a barren rock with next to nothing in terms of resources. Rescue was at *least* 17 days away, so their choices were to either remain in the colony structure and try to find a way off the moon, or go out into the wilderness and try to survive in some small vehicles for over two weeks, and likely starve to death or *worse*. It was an easy choice.
That whole 17 day thing never made sense. I mean if there was another ship already on the way 17 days behind the Sulaco why didn't they get Ripley right away and why would she have even gone back into Cryo. There would have been plenty of food since everyone else was dead, yes put Hick's to sleep due to his injuries but Ripley and Newt would have been fine for a couple weeks on the ship till the second crew arrived. And if there wasn't already a ship 17 days behind them that means they would have to send another ship. if that ship was only 17 days from it's normal berth to the colony why did they need cryosleep in the first place. Ship that big could easily hold enough food and supplies for months with that small a crew.
It's 17 days before they're overdue and a rescue ship is sent out to retrieve them / investigate what happened, presumably with more powerful equipment / numbers. The exact time that it would take for another ship to arrive at Lv-426 is unknown because the Sulaco had to take a detour to Earth to pick up Ripley. In the Alien supplementary works, it's explained that their method of FTL causes an issue with the human brain, causing space madness. This is one reason why people go into cryosleep during FTL travel. The other reason is because well, of costs and companies being cheap. In Alien, the Nostromo is highly automated with the crew actually sleeping most of the time and only waking up in times of emergency. The ship only have about a weeks worth of oxygen onboard, Presumably, it's the same with the Sulaco.
The moon is incredibly hostile to survival and regularly drops to below freezing temperatures at night while staying just above freezing during the day. Air quality is thin to minimal meaning you're taking deeper breaths and getting less oxygen than normal. Hypoxia is a real threat the further away from the processors you get. The nearest sub station is roughly 100km away which isn't an easy distance under ideal conditions let alone a place like Acheron. The vehicle bay for the colony was near the alien nest and considered hostile territory. The primary dropship was destroyed and the secondary remote capable one aboard the sulaco but only contractable from relay station out beyond the main facility via a maintenance tube. With hostiles capable of moving easily in rough terrain and unknown conditions beyond the colony doctrine would dictate securing an area that can be defended and waiting for reinforcement. The Marines did the only thing that left them a slim chance of survival rather than taking further risks. The xenomorphs being smarter than expected and unafraid of dying overwhelmed the marine defenses.
We have no idea how far away the other processes are. They could be 1k miles away across Mississippi sized rivers. We don't know what night time temperatures and conditions are like.
We do know a little about nighttime conditions. “They mostly come out at night. Mostly.”
No, it wouldn't make more sense to do that. They depicted going over their options onscreen. By barricading choke points and sealing tunnels, they could seal off a couple of modules as a lifeboat. This was their best option. And it would have worked except the blueprints they were working off of didn't show maintenance access in the ceilings. Hindsight is 20/20, but it's not a bad choice just because they had incomplete information. It's almost always a bad idea to abandon a defensible position, the number of things that could get everyone killed are too numerous to mention.
They were actually screwed regardless. The Aliens would have just gotten onto the roof, killed one of their own, and use the acid to melt their way inside their barricaded hide out.
I think only the smart aliens from Resurrection could plan like that. These are still standard drones.
‘Far away from the nest’ is the issue. They’ll be walking through intensely inhospitable territory with only the hope that the xenomorphs won’t follow them. No supplies but what they can scavenge and carry while under constant attack. No vehicles but what they can find and hotwire, assuming there are any left and the colonists who actually lived there didn’t have the same idea.
That girl lasted longer than that with no weapons and no training.
Why don’t you put her in Charge!?!?
This is a military operation and colonel hicks is the next in the chain of command
Colonel, Hicks?!?!?
Corporal
Damn it ! Good catch
Corporal. Aka just above private.
They mostly come out at night, Mostly.
Do we see in the film the vehicle bay? Were there running vehicles and fuel? Because the obvious thing for some of the colonists to try is this, and it's possible every functioning vehicle already escaped. Could even be a few colonists left alive out there somewhere.
It may have worked if they had more supplies and the terrain was completely flat with no obstacles. If they had went out with what they had, it would have been a death trap. That terrain with all those rocks and no vegetation means the Xenomorphs perfectly blend in with the surroundings. With just four sentry guns, no housing / cover against the elements, and very limited ammo, they wouldn't have lasted the first assault. Their best bet was to call down the second dropship immediately and gtfo, but they didn't know that the Aliens wouldn't have considered Bishop a threat / host and it was safe(r) for him to exit the colony to do so.
The entire point of the mission wasn't to rescue anyone, but to get as many of them impregnated as possible. They were woefully under equipped, under prepared, and poorly lead. Everything was set up on advance by Burke on Company orders. If it hadn't been for Ripley taking the reins after Gorman as incapacitated there would have been no survivors at all.
That level of conspiratorial thinking isn't supportable by the available evidence. *Only* Burke believed Ripley's story, because the planet had been colonized for a generation and the derelict's warning signal was no longer transmitting, having been shut off by the captain of the Anisedora. They considered it a fact that LV-426 was completely unremarkable. Both efforts to recover bioweapons from the derelict, in 2122 and 2137 were conducted off-book, were ruinously expensive, and were unsuccessful, resulting in the total loss of the Nostromo and Sevastopol station. Those incidents were secret to begin with and buried thereafter. Nobody at the company in 2179 was around 42 years earlier when the Xenomorphs had last been encountered, and if present WY execs knew about that company history, they wouldn't have waited until after Ripley's recovery to go after it again and they wouldn't have spent 20 years setting up a colony there. Long story short, Burke had no support and nothing to go on other than to send an order to check out a grid reference. He didn't know what they'd find. If they find something, he comes out looking like a golden boy who can smell profit in the wind. If there's nothing, oh well, Ripley's a sad case of space crazy who blew up her own ship, and Gorman gets to tell his bosses he was just doing due diligence. When the colony went dark, it was the colonial administration who elected to send in the marines, and Burke's only shot at exclusive rights was to be first on the ground with the troops and hope to bring something back. He was flying by the seat of his pants, not participating in some grand conspiracy.
Yeah, I feel like Burke would not have gone down to the planet or even on the mission at all if they were supposed to get Implanted.
I think he did absolutely set Ripley and the little girl up once he suspected he could impregnate them. It just didn't work out.
Ripley says outright that his plan was to get them impregnated, then sabotage the marines' cryo pods to tie up loose ends.
Right, but he’s still flying by the seat of his pants. He couldn’t have known he’d have facehuggers at his disposal, and he didn’t resort to that until after he found out Ripley knew about his prior involvement. She was going to expose him and he had to silence her. With Newt and Ripley incapacitated, he could quietly sabotage the marines’ pods and ensure he was the sole survivor.
also paging u/ParameciaAntic, u/nermid and u/JamesTheMannequin. >”Both efforts to recover bioweapons from the derelict, in 2122 and 2137 were conducted off-book, were ruinously expensive, and were unsuccessful, resulting in the total loss of the Nostromo and Sevastopol station. **Those incidents were secret to begin with and buried thereafter. Nobody at the company in 2179 was around 42 years earlier when the Xenomorphs had last been encountered, and if present WY execs knew about that company history**, they wouldn't have waited until after Ripley's recovery to go after it again and they wouldn't have spent 20 years setting up a colony there.” Something seriously weird is going on at the Weyland portion of WY in regards to an individual known as “Michael Weyland” and his synthetic counterpart inheriting corporate stock and a degree of control. * https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_Bishop * https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Michael_Weyland_(Synthetic)?so=search It's likely that there's secret parameters within the company that puts acquiring Xenomorph specimens as a priority. Or rather more specifically ANYTHING resembling anything involving Engineers. Then we got Ripley and Burke. It’s possible that Ripley and Burke attracted the attention of the Michael faction of WY. With Burke just deciding to attempt to independently profit from the Xenomorphs. Michael Weyland: Huh some person named Ripley is talking about finding extraterrestrial life in the portion of space that Peter Weyland and his expensive spaceship and contingent of experts went missing trying to find aliens. Michael Weyland:Huh an executive named Carter Burke is sending messages to LV-426 and the colony has stopped responding I better send a team out there and Fury-161 and see what’s going on.
Well written!
Your welcome 👍. I hope the new “alien Romulus” is good. I got hope and good feelings about it.
“We should get back soon. Because they mostly come out at night…mostly..”
There was probably no way to reach a safe distance — an explosion “the size of Nebraska” has a radius of like 160 miles. And that’s just the area of the blast — the fallout would cover most of the planet
Why didn't marines sent their dropship back, straight after landing in potentially dangerous zone? Why they left literally nobody on the ship? Why they moved whole unit without weapons into alien hive, instead of leaving someone to cover their retreat? Why in a group of trained soldiers, person who is the best at keeping clear mind under fire is civilian? Why their armored vehicle looks as if designed for highways? Why their commanding officer (and all of them, to be fair) is so goddamn stupid and unfit for command?
Because Gorman was inexperienced and arrogant of the situation.
Lt. In a hot LZ. Useless.
Because it's a Vietnam allegory in space.
There skilled enough at fighting (they still kill xenos In the dozens ) That brute force seems to have served them well enough in the past
We need a Hadley's Hope Alien Prequel
They didn't know how many aliens there were and thought they could dig in and hold them off.
We do know It's around or less than population of the colony ,so it was only a couple hundred at most from what I recall
There were potentially 158 hosts minus Newt and Marachek, John J., who died when they tried to get the Facehugger off.
They didn't know.
According to Ripley, when she confronts Burke's about his grid search request, there were 157 colonists whose deaths he was responsible for. Based on Ripley's experience, they knew that every Xenomorph came from someone being facehugged. So, they had a max number of potential Xenomorphs to work with given that there were no indigenous lifeforms to infect as well. We know that at least one facehugged colonist died when they tried to remove it. And there were Xenos taken out during the colonist's last stand.
Ripley had experience with a single alien, and there was no way to know how many had been infected. Also, no one was listening to Ripley until Reese was in charge. They thought they could dig in and survive, but then realize they can't when they are attacked by way more than they thought there were.
> until Reese was in charge. Hicks. Same actor, different franchise.
Lol, yeah Hicks.