If Prometheus is Alien canon then...

Very good point. While the black goo is very dangerous, clearly a second expedition which had a better idea of what it was up against could collect some and bring it back, if sufficient precautions were taken. At first I thought Weyland-Yutani simply never found out what happened to the Prometheus expedition -- but given that Peter Weyland himself was aboard and didn't come back, it's very unlikely that they'd just write it off without making great efforts to find out what happened. It does make sense that in the intervening 30 years someone -- human or Engineer -- would destroy the bases on LV-223 to eliminate the threat they pose. I could even imagine Shaw doing that as she left at the end of Prometheus, assuming the Engineer ships carry H-bombs.

Unless the passengers of Prometheus were transmittitng everything that happened back to earth, no one else would know anything that took place during the movie. No black goo, aliens, temple, nothing.The only survivor(s) was on the way to another planet.

Well, its "just" a movie which is the outcome of the brain of a screenwriter. Anyway, following logical behavior, i think - we can assume that all the informations collected on that prometheus mission are known by weyland company on earth - not sure if weyland would be able to send another ship to LV-223 as this is expensive and a question of "investors interests", who dont care about the fate of prometheus or even peter weyland, they want "profit for their investion", and just to answer some questions without real financial outcome they would not accept a second expedition just to find out what happends. - the next stage of the story will lead us to new worlds where we will see that engineers and aliens are just a "very small" part of a whole unknown culture. The "engineers" seem also to be just clones or puppets, designed for a purpose, maybe soldiers / explorers. They even dont look like "extraterrestrial scientists", scientists dont need muscles. These are warriors who receive orders, and as they all look the same more or less, they are "designed". So i am very curious about what will go on (or even did go on) in lindelofs head, but as said very often, i am scared that he will do it once again ("..oups, i did it again..") and open some doors widely, and behind that door you will just find new questions. I am not sure if i will go with him that way, maybe i will simply turn over to other stories as i dont need something like that, a waste of LOST time...

@spaceyfreak How can we assume the weyland corp. on earth knows everything that took place in Prometheus? Who told them? I thought everyone except Shaw dies.

@KingMe The same way that Weyland Corp knew about everything that happened on the Sulaco and EEV in Alien 3, all data, recordings etc get automatically sent back to home base.

If we assume that a follow-up expedition to check up on Peter Weyland wouldn't be sent because of the cost, and that the Company therefore is relying on transmitted data from Prometheus to find out what happened, and that the transmission is sent by normal radio waves and thus is limited to the speed of light, then the data would reach Earth 34 years later -- right around the time that the Nostromo gets diverted to a system in the same area -- perhaps in time to be the [i]cause[/i] of the diversion, since in this scenario this would be the first the Company knew of the black goo, etc. Of course, this assumes the Company is able to communicate instantaneously with the Nostromo. Perhaps faster-than-light communication exists but is too expensive to use except in emergencies. The Company presumably did consider the matter urgent, since they diverted a random ship that happened to be near the system they were interested in (the Nostromo) rather than taking time to send a new expedition.

IMO The Weyland Corp knows nothing of the Prometheus mission. The events at the begining of Alien could be explained by the Corporation looking for clues to what happened to Peter Weyland(distress signals in space). Assuming the Corp knows everything because thats what they did in Alien 3 isn't convincing.

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It seems like there are two theories about timelines. The story changes depending on which one you believe. In one view, the xenos existed prior to Prometheus, and the black goo is kind of a "distilled" version. In this view, it's possible for Weyland-Yutani to have encountered the "classic" Alien elsewhere. It could be totally ignorant of the events of Prometheus and just assume that Weyland died mysteriously. Just as we assume in "Alien," the Company has encountered this specific creature once or twice before. But in the other theory, the "classic" xeno somehow evolves from the "Deacon". Not clear how it does this, but presumably it has to get off-world somehow (no hosts left on the Engineer facility). Maybe there have been one-off attacks / infestations in other Weyland and/or Yutani installations during the intervening thirty years, as the organism develops into the "classic" xeno? In my opinion, this one makes less sense though...

Normal corporate missions surely would be sent back to Weyland Yutani, so the boss knows what's going on. But on this mission the BOSS has travelled with them, not for the purpose of doing something to benefit the company, but to personally meet his maker and ask for immortality. Firstly, that's not company business, and secondly, do you think a guy with a God complex would want other people to know that they could be immortal? Did you notice that when the text appears on the screen telling us the name, number of crew, and distance of the ship, it also says that the destination is undisclosed. I think that this was private business for Mr. Weyland, and even if he used company money rather than his own to fund it, he didn't keep them in the loop, and thus they have no idea where he disappeared to, or what happened to the ship and crew. Otherwise they'd be up there. (it's closer than the system Nostromo was passing through, and they were only HALFWAY home with their cargo) Think about the various mission objectives and what might be known. In Alien, they sent the Nostromo to investigate a strange signal. Perhaps they know more about it, than we think, but there's no reason to think they actually understand it, unless there's another David, who (for some random reason) also spent two years learning ancient Space Jockey language.... but perhaps one thing made them very curious. Shaws message - there's no way Shaws transmission "do not come here" is the same message from LV -223 (different ship, not in English, and 10 light years apart) but, if you think about it, Shaw MUST have transmitted her message from the Juggernaut, because the Prometheus was wrecked and the Lifeboat has a Xenomorphy running around it. So the company would be intrigued to intercept a message using the same communications technology as Shaws message, and they know that Shaw was one of the last people to see Weyland alive. If they really knew the nature of the creature, they would have sent a very well armed and armoured team with biology specialists - like they did at the end of Alien 3. In Aliens, they didn't really believe Sigourneys account, (Burke may have, and seen the opportunity for making money) and only sent Marines after they lost contact with the colony. If the company knew all about Aliens and black goo, then Burke wouldn't have been the only one on the mission with an agenda, and he wouldn't need to smuggle anything back. They would have sent a bunch of mercenaries with instructions to bring back the aliens. Alien 4, they still don't know about the goo - and the Ripley clone is born 200 years after the Real Ripley died. If they knew about the goo, they wouldn't be out conducting cloning experiments on the Auriga. They'd be conducting biowarfare experiments on LV 223. (becoming as bad as the Space Jockeys themselves)

I find it very difficult to believe the Corporation didn't know what happened there, or at least sent someone to find out. Again, at the end of the credits it says the footage was property of Weyland corp. Granted, I'm almost certain that's a glorified ad for the blu ray release, but whatever. But, if it wasn't the fact that Weyland AND his daughter were on that ship, it would've been Shaw's transmission that would've brought them there. I just find it very hard to believe this Corporation, which seemingly has endless funds, would not send a follow up mission to find out what happened to the CEO and his daughter. That's assuming everything wasn't just transmitted to them.

ya never know, they definitely know about all this that's for sure.

Well, while there are no human hosts anymore, the deacon or protoxeno Might come in touch with The black goo in the crashed Derelict. And who knows whats Behind the xeno mural? it looks like a heavily sealed door to me. Maybe there are already xenos on that ship or eggs.

This is a hard one because, like infidel said, we have 30 years between prometheus and alien. I don't have any real complete theory but I do think that David is the key. Shaw had his living head and body in tow when she left. He professed a desire for his "parents" to die and seemed the most educated and interested in the black goo weapon. He may make it back to be weyland corps driving force into the alien series.

We do seem to develop remote communications at superluminal speeds in the alien 'verse, but are they in place during the Prometheus mission? Seems possible they aren't and that the "transmission" would be radio. At the suggested distances, and taking Earth as the starting point, if everything that happened on LV-426 in Prometheus were transmitted back as it happened it would not be received on Earth until after the events in Alien. That's if anyone was still listening. In the context of a mission like Prometheus' it seems likely that radio transmission would be seen as an almost obsolete means of communication - perhaps a last resort redundancy should the mission meet with complete failure, but not practical as such. They might actually not bother. If radio *was* all they had for remote comms, this would mean nobody was fully aware of what happened on LV-426 until someone could physically get there... ...and we don't yet know the full story of LV-426, whether anyone did, and *if* they did, what they found.