Nostromo and crew size

Nostromo was a rather small towing vessel, and this is the refinery which it pulls with it back to Earth.

chli-

Understood. Still, that is a massive refinery and a lot of real estate for that crew. I know that I am nit picking but it always made me wonder.

That is the Rig it was pulling...

The Nostromo was the Smaller Ship that Landed on LV-426 but indeed yes a lot of the scenes i think was on this ship maybe some could have been on the Rig maybe?  i am sure SM would be the best one to answer this.

its a good question as the Rig was Massive...  and we have to ask... and this is a Question that never gets answered much if at all on here..

Why was a huge Rig being towed with none of the operational crew/staff of the Rig?

I just assume then the Rig maybe finished its purpose, or one job and was to be towed to a new destination and so did not need any operational crew.... so its a question of where did the crew of the Rig Go?   Likely they had finished there work and would make separate journey to their destinations...

Or the Rig was intended to get to a new location and then workers would be brought in to then conduct work on it.

As i would say that Rig would be able to support a few hundred people.  Size Wise.

I think  the refinery towers were partially responsible for the big boom the Nostromo makes when it's destroyed.

Yes, Big Dave. Routine operations and maintenance checks would have to be performed. A lot could go wrong on a ship of that size and a lot did go wrong on the smaller Nostromo. There simply is no hint of anyone else in the movie except for the crew. Still doesn't interfere with it being my favorite sci fi movie though.

Could have been automated. weyland, weyland-yutani had automated refineries in that time line and before.

I'm gonna jump on the automated bandwagon. Maybe Parker and Brett could handle any minor malfunctions if they came up, but it was designed to work on its own. 

Though another possibility is that all the refining is done, but they just ship the whole thing back to refine another payload that gets deposited at the destination.

The Sulaco, on the other hand makes zero sense. There was NO ship crew that we ever saw on that one and it's a BIG ship.

@Myrddin365

That was what I was attempting to convey. Everything was supposedly automated yet there were several malfunctions in the smaller ships. I think it stands to reason that the larger elements would be of similar technology and vulnerable to the same pitfalls. My main point is that a crew that small would have a tough time managing, especially since their cargo was probably pretty valuable.

Yeah I've noticed that about the Sulaco too lol.Big ass Marine vessel,only 12 marines and an "artificial person".

The artificial person was the crew.

"Nostromo was a rather small towing vessel, and this is the refinery which it pulls with it back to Earth."

It's Sevastopol station.

Yeah the refinery towers look like Sevastopol station but its not.And i don't really understand your Bishop comment.

Bishop handled things like orbital insertion on the Sulaco. ie. actual piloting duties.

That picture in the OP is Sevastopol; not the Nostromo refinery.  The refinery is a platform with four spires.

"The Nostromo was the Smaller Ship that Landed on LV-426 but indeed yes a lot of the scenes i think was on this ship maybe some could have been on the Rig maybe?  i am sure SM would be the best one to answer this."

All the action on the ship took place on the towing vehicle - none on the refinery.

That much i understand about Bishop thank for clearing it up.And the Nostromo figured as much.

No worries.

@SM

Hmm... thanks for the insight.

Yes, the action only took place on The Nostromo (A, B and C deck). I guess the refinery was shut down and was only a carrier of the produced oil? When they were on LV-426 the refinery was in orbit around the moon.

It wasn't shutdown.  It was refining the ore while travelling back to earth.

Does it really matter S.M.

As already stated, the Nostromo was a towing vehicle (pretty bigass yeah), and the crew of seven was relevant to the script as the poor lone xeno would have a lot of running, crawling and hunting to do if there were more crew on board.

Realistically speaking without context to the story though I'd expect maybe a couple of hundred more technicians and miners, but again that's irrelevant to the script.