Never make it back? No one on Earth knows about Engineers?

They are either destroyed or they decide to stay and live amongst the Engineers. If they ever made it back to Earth, Weyland/Yutani armed with the military will try and find a way to get there, to see what kind of technology they can steal and bring back to Earth. If they could, try and catch an Engineer and experiment on him/it. See how it functions, clone it, mix it with human dna.

they go through hell save the day and humanity who are none the wiser only to return to be accosted by the company and find vickers alive and smug and repaired (cos shes an android) and now she knows it! but the board dont and she has inherited weyland corp and has brought baby home SMASH TO BLACK!

Greg The Bunny: Smashy, smashy. Ah ha ha...Really, what is it with this 'Smash'? Even the 'beat' is new to me.

I am not sure Shaw expects to come back.

read lindelofs script! SMASH TO BLACK!

When Shaw and David arrive back on Earth in a Juggernaut they would have a lot of explaining to do. If you think this site asks a lot of unanswered questions can you imagine trying to explain everything we have seen so far to questioning Weyland Corp Board? Heck they could be accused of murdering Engineers!

yeah shaw would be carted to the space age funny farm and david would be "sent back to the workshop for repairs"

To be honest I think they should die only because it needs to make sense for the opening of ALIEN. No one knows anything except for the crew on the nostromo and the company who wants the "lifeform" for their bio weapons division.

It is not a question, at least in Shaw's case, that she will die but how and when. THere must certainly be space srtories that circulate on various crews so I don't the exploits on LV-223 will be any different.If only because the video recording system used by the Engineers for the holographs is still active or updated. Perhaps Shaw is a hero in the Engineer's world and achieves a sort of immortality in their culture..completely separate from the human and Alien storyline.

Yeah Shaw will be their heroe. And they'd respect her for giving birth to the trilobite lol @legendaryxeno - how do the nostromo crew and the corp know?? Someone must survive whether it be shaw,david,or vickers, unless someone has gone to the prometheus restplace and found out there?? Or even the engineers home?... still doesnt explain eggs, hopefully 2 will.

It's possible the mission's data were transmitted to earth for safe keeping perhaps to be accessible to corporate VIPs post CEO death?

yep definately i think the black goo infographic hinted that david and or vickers were reporting back during the mission i noticed that when they arrived and david opened the carapace over the viewing deck that you can hear fuzzy radio traffic/some form of digital audio signals of some kind in the background so even that far out the ship seemed able to pick up signal from the last outpost?