The Connection

Agreed about the living ship idea; that sounds pretty sweet. This may be insignificant, but my one quip is this: the older the ship is, the older it's distress signal is. Just comparing it to our modern technology, we can barely keep a standard for 20 years... Perhaps the Nostromo could recognize all older distress signals as well? But if the ship is 10,000 years old... Would they even be able to get a distress signal? I doubt we'll still be using radio in 10,000 years...

Theres an idea in an alien spin off novel called 'Steel Egg' where it describes a distress signal having detailed information on the Alien, its lifecycle etc. Maybe the company picked up this signal and were able to decypher it,then send in the Nostromo? The original signal in Alien could be thousands of years old. They explain today that our radio signals are flying through space,a sort of frequency echo. This could possibly explain the age of the derilict and also how the company found out about the Alien in the first place? It always bothered me in Alien,that Ash didnt go to the derilict to destroy this 'signal' so other organisations wouldnt find it. Maybe the company realised that what ever was producing this signal was long since destroyed/kerputt, the radio echo theory may be the answer? Whats your thoughts?

I disagree. I think we'll use electromagnetic radiation to communicate forever. It is a fundamental force after all. In Alien, Dallas says that it's an "acoustical beacon" which doesn't really make sense since acoustics is vibration through solids, liquids or gases. How did the Nostromo receive the signal in space? It was hypothesised that the signal was a warning so the space jockey may have deliberately used a variety of different types of transmission.

above post for Ben. I agree with your echo theory, Thadus12

If the Xenomophic/terraforming theory was correct wouldn't you want to recover the ship if that was your technology? What happened there, why didn't the Space Jockey's people come for the ship if they were at all concerned about having it's secrets revealed. Easier yet, why didn't it do what Ripley did with the [i]Nostromo[/i] Those are all questions that have revolved around each time I watch the film. I read the Alien Harvest blog, and while it's entertaining, I hope that Prometheus goes in a different direction. I hate to think that our falibilities as a species resulted in the entire chain of events.

Space will be a playground for the privilaged and the powerful. The ships and technology represent investments in capital and resources that would bankrupt small independent companies. Weyland Yutani is a conglomerate that has probably eaten up all the lesser corporations that might have been a threat to it. No doubt they would not have a problem resorting to industrial espionage in order to keep their interests private. As regards the Space Jockey's distress signal perhaps it required years of reconstruction if had been bouncing around between stars losing integrity for thousands of years. There's a lot of noise out there and if it was one segment of bandwidth among all that static. It might have been discovered by unmanned survey ships as Weyland Yutani obviously has mining interests. If a survey probe did a fly by of the system it would have stood a better chance of picking up this beacon if the broadcast itself was faint due to EM interference from LV-426 or it's two suns. Worse yet, if the ship was operating under reduced output so the signal strength was downgraded in order to conserve it's power reserves.

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where is Giger in all of this? will he get some long deserved and neglected credits? we are seeing his inventions on the masthead of the site here and i saw 'derelict ship' designs allegedly from this film that completely reference Giger's 'derelict ship' from Alien

H.R. Giger is doing all of the Alien designs in Prometheus,including the brand new bigger xeno, but he is bound by contract not to give anything away. This film will be special.

"ya- rrright!?"