Aliens : Why would they NOT have anyone on the Sulaco

Why would they NOT have anyone on the Sulaco

It really never made sense to not have a team or at least one person on the Sulaco. Why not leave someone on there and avoid being totally cut off should the drop-ship transport is not an operable. They seem to keep people on transport while others go exploring, so why not the main transport?

Re: Why would they NOT have anyone on the Sulaco

Same reason you don't leave anyone at home, in case your front door key stops working.

Re: Why would they NOT have anyone on the Sulaco

That is not even remotely similar to the question I asked.

Re: Why would they NOT have anyone on the Sulaco

Fine.....

The Sulaco is an unbelievably advanced piece of equipment that can navigate through weeks of long distance space travel and arrive at its destination with almost pinpoint accuracy all by itself. You can even remotely operate most of the Drop, because it's that automated.
Why would it now need another crew aboard, just in case? Same argument as your house key, actually, but whatever.

The small skeleton squad (not even a full compliment, based on the number of weapons in the armoury and lockers in the sleeping area) have been sent out to deal with what is most likely a downed transmitter. What could possibly go wrong?

Also, what makes you think their lives are actually worth the cost of an extra crew on board the Sulaco?
If the ground crew are cut off, why risk another crew to save them? Waste of money. This is Weyland Yutani, here.

Or just because it's a convenient plot vehicle and the film would be much shorter and very boring if they did that. You'd be nice and happy because your film made utter sense, but it'd be over in half the time. Just like the sensible kids who DON'T go up to the old abandoned cabin by Death Lake for a weekend of sex and drinking...

Plenty of reasons - Take your pick...



They seem to keep people on transport while others go exploring, so why not the main transport?

No, they don't.
They have one officer who co-ordinates the squad, to the point where they can be split, quartered or even sent off individually and still remain in co-ordinated communication. He is not there "just in case" because he's one officer who can do very little if his people all find themselves needing him to save them. You'd need a full APC crew at least, else the thing is mostly useless.

They have one pilot and one weapons officer/loadmaster on the Dropship, because that's just their job. Having them as a separate element facilitates rapid deployment and extraction.

Re: Why would they NOT have anyone on the Sulaco

Because space travel is costly, that is a given. While the hardness level of the Alien universe is not relatively all that high and we see interstellar travel approached a bit more casually, it can still be reasonably assumed that if you can have one fewer head in cryo, you do. Hence the Sulaco's heavy automation to begin with.

There were contingencies for the scenario of active dropship becoming inoperable or unavailable:

* use of the transmitter on board the APC to remote pilot the second dropship

* use of the radio hardware present at every Company colony site to do the same, which would ordinarily be trivial to do from any terminal anywhere onsite.

That the redundancy was not more robust in a one-squad deployment like this is probably a factor of USCM's typical mission not containing the magnitude of threats encountered in Aliens to begin with; and especially, scenarios like this radio-silence one on LV426 rarely implying more than a transmitter failure with small possibility of easily-dispatched xenomorph involvement. Hence why it WAS a single-squad operation. A larger deployment in line with an expected larger threat would have contained multiple vessels, multiple squads, multiple dropships and multiple APCs thus having additional redundancy by nature.

Incompetence of personnel is also a huge factor in why this drop went to hell so severely in general and applies here as well. If dropship crew Ferro/Spunkmeyer had only paid attention to securing their aircraft and closed the ramp, shot that single xenomorph as it attempted to enter, or responded appropriately to the slime/resin Spunkmeyer found near the ramp with an armed search of the ship for its source before proceeding; and had thus not been killed, and not crashed, this would not even be a question. It ties into the "typical mission" observation in that I imagine years of responding to technical difficulties and xenomorphic pests/minor threats (bug hunt) has rendered the troops lazy and careless.

Re: Why would they NOT have anyone on the Sulaco

Is leaving the Sulaco alone and unmanned really all that much different than when everyone aboard is asleep in cryo? In hindsight they should have left someone, but they weren't expecting to lose the first drop ship. Things might have been different if they took Ripley's "story" more seriously but they were overconfident in their ability to handle any situation which might arise down at the colony.
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