Why WY established colony on LV-426 without investigating Derelict ship?

[SM]

(There's a well-researched article over at Valaquen's Strange Shapes website from which the following snippet cometh.)  I have always liked this Dan O'Bannon spin on Alien: "[they] went to where the Old Ones lived, to their very world of origin ... That baneful little storm-lashed planetoid halfway across the galaxy was a fragment of the Old Ones' home-world, and the Alien a blood relative of Yog-Sothoth."

That would be reason enough for the little world to have such bizarre physical qualities, IMHO.

Works for me.   

[Local Trouble]

You'd also be able to see the curvature of the horizon with the naked eye.

Are you so accustomed to repeating the horizon argument that you've already forgotten the last time we discussed it?

Show me a screenshot of LV-426's surface that isn't obstructed by terrain so we can conclusively "see the curvature of the horizon with the naked eye."  If you can find one.

[FenGiddel]

Astrophysical dimensions are usually too much for me to visualize, without, er, visuals, so after shooting my mouth off earlier about the planetoid being near in size to Pluto's Charon, I took the next self-edificational step and googled to find out how big is Charon (comparable to the '1,200 km' bit) and was amazed to discover it is smaller than the Moon.  (Yes, it sometimes take me a bit long to get around the block, but I get there...)

I guess even with its own montes (and the 5.5 km Mons Huygens), it is still pretty easy to see the moon's horizon. 

So, I'm still open to interpretations on the size of the eldritch planetoid (aka LV-426).

[Local Trouble]

SM says it's 1,200 km.

[SM]

There is a graphic in Ash's science blister that shows Dallas, Lambert and Kane's progress towards the Derelict, which I believe supports a smaller size.  There's a curvature on the grid squares over the distance of a couple of kilometres.

[FenGiddel]

I love this graphic.  It's POV seems kind of a stretch, do you think, since it shows the target area beyond the ship, unless Nostromo dropped a few a satellites in orbit for such support..

Too bad this doesn't have coherent metrics:







I don't remember BLOB mentioning any particular circumference, but his graphic here certainly is indicative of the smaller size:





But I'm not a fierce "anti-1200-klicks-ist", despite the typo in this chart...



It cannot have been an easy job working on the WYR, given the press for time when making movies and that graphics like these may or may not have been chosen/designed for conveying the values we assign them.


Still, it makes for good conversation, my friend.  Always a pleasure...

[SM]

That's the one.  Couldn't find that image anywhere online.

It shows visible angles on the grid squares over an area of the few square kilometres.  If the planet was Earth sized, those angles wouldn't be visible.  I assume the area was surveyed while they were landing (or being tracked from the refinery?)

[FenGiddel]

Dammit, man, do ye never stop?!?      Actually, I never thought about the refinery...

Here's a bone for yer trouble, my go-to for Alien screencaps at HD:

http://shadowofreflection.tumblr.com/post/25144018856/alien-directors-cut-bluray-screencaps


It's a treasure-trove for others as well.

Enjoy!   

[SM]

It's... beautiful!

[Local Trouble]

There is a graphic in Ash's science blister that shows Dallas, Lambert and Kane's progress towards the Derelict, which I believe supports a smaller size.  There's a curvature on the grid squares over the distance of a couple of kilometres.

So... 1,200 km?

[SM]

Yep.

[Xenomrph]

There is a graphic in Ash's science blister that shows Dallas, Lambert and Kane's progress towards the Derelict, which I believe supports a smaller size.  There's a curvature on the grid squares over the distance of a couple of kilometres.

This assumes the grid lines are depicting a sphere, or that they represent latitude and longitude. If the curved lines are longitude like they are on a globe, then the curvature doesn't make sense if it's depicting a sphere - the line closest to the bottom-left corner is almost straight, the one in the middle has the most curvature, and the one on the right is less curved than the one in the middle.

The only way those curved lines *might* make sense is if the crew is advancing from one of the poles and they're actually lines of latitude, which would appear as concentric circles when viewed from a polar perspective. But the landing tracking graphic posted above doesn't indicate anything close to a polar landing.

We don't really know what that display is actually supposed to be depicting, or what the grid lines represent. It could be using the Nostromo as the focal point, with the curved lines indicating "expected degradation of radio communication signal due to atmospheric interference" or something for all we know.

[Local Trouble]

There is a graphic in Ash's science blister that shows Dallas, Lambert and Kane's progress towards the Derelict, which I believe supports a smaller size.  There's a curvature on the grid squares over the distance of a couple of kilometres.

This assumes the grid lines are depicting a sphere, or that they represent latitude and longitude. If the curved lines are longitude like they are on a globe, then the curvature doesn't make sense if it's depicting a sphere - the line closest to the bottom-left corner is almost straight, the one in the middle has the most curvature, and the one on the right is less curved than the one in the middle.

The only way those curved lines *might* make sense is if the crew is advancing from one of the poles and they're actually lines of latitude, which would appear as concentric circles when viewed from a polar perspective. But the landing tracking graphic posted above doesn't indicate anything close to a polar landing.

We don't really know what that display is actually supposed to be depicting, or what the grid lines represent. It could be using the Nostromo as the focal point, with the curved lines indicating "expected degradation of radio communication signal due to atmospheric interference" or something for all we know.

It seems this discussion was never truly resolved.

[SM]

There never was anything to be resolved.

[Xenomrph]

So my point stands

Glad we resolved that.