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

[Xenomrph]

Still not buying it was easier to spend years cloning someone than to fly three weeks out to the source to have a look.

Even if you assume the Auriga couldn't go there,  they clearly have no problem outsourcing work to other people. They could have got other people to collect specimens.

I find it really easy to believe that it's easier to try and clone someone in-house rather than try and smuggle a dangerous organism halfway across the galaxy. What if the person you're outsourcing it to f**ks up and one of them gets facehugged (like what happens in 'Alien', 'Alien Isolation', 'Aliens')? What if the person you outsource it to gets the bright idea to sell off the eggs to the highest bidder rather than bringing them back to you? There's a ton of things that could go wrong, and it's a heck of a lot safer and simpler to tell your outsourced person "bring us a dozen people in cryosleep, no I won't tell you what they're for, just collect your money".

We already know the Auriga was operating "off the books", and that they were still limited to operating in the Sol system rather than going out into deep space away from prying eyes, and were limited to paying mercenaries to run errands rather than doing the work themselves. Naturally that would limit what's available to them, rendering the Derelict a "nonviable" source. When certain options aren't available to you, you make do with what you've got.

[OpenMaw]

Or. The Derelict was destroyed, or the eggs irradiated, and Weyland Yutani was never able to get their sample, which is why 200 years later USM did what they did. Which is the simpler, more believable explination.

[oberonqa]

The problem with the word "nonviable" is it can mean so many different things.  This thread here illustrates that point quite succinctly.  It really depends on the individual on how to interpret it.  It could very well be as Xenomrph and cliffhanger says and the Derelict was a nonviable source due to restrictions placed on the Auriga.  It could also very well be that like others have said, the Derelict was a nonviable source due to the eggs being sterile.  The CMTM page excerpt is just vague enough to support the theory that the eggs were sterile.  After all, only two specimens gathered out of the entire ship?  After everything Wey-Yu went through to get their hands on those eggs, why stop with just two specimens?  Why not bring back as many as they can safely can or even set up a research facility on-site ala Aliens: CM?

In the end, the interpretation depends on the needs of the person interpreting the word.  I want Alien 5, so for me, I interpret the word to mean the Derelict was a nonviable source due to restrictions placed on the Auriga.  It serves my agenda and desire to see an Alien 5 someday so it works for me.  But I'm certainly not going to deny the possibility that the Derelict was a nonviable source due to the eggs being sterile.  In the end, it depends on the individual and whoever ends up writing the story for the next movie in the Alien series.  That person will have their own agenda and desires and if this question needs to be addressed, it will fall to that person's interpretation and agenda. 

[SiL]

What if the person you're outsourcing it to f**ks up and one of them gets facehugged (like what happens in 'Alien', 'Alien Isolation', 'Aliens')?

What if they sent a competent team? What if they sent an informed team that they paid enough to not run to a higher bidder? What if they sent military personnel on a clandestine operation?

It's really easy to support either side with baseless 'what ifs'.

[Russ840]

The problem with the word "nonviable" is it can mean so many different things.  This thread here illustrates that point quite succinctly.  It really depends on the individual on how to interpret it.  It could very well be as Xenomrph and cliffhanger says and the Derelict was a nonviable source due to restrictions placed on the Auriga.  It could also very well be that like others have said, the Derelict was a nonviable source due to the eggs being sterile.  The CMTM page excerpt is just vague enough to support the theory that the eggs were sterile.  After all, only two specimens gathered out of the entire ship?  After everything Wey-Yu went through to get their hands on those eggs, why stop with just two specimens?  Why not bring back as many as they can safely can or even set up a research facility on-site ala Aliens: CM?

In the end, the interpretation depends on the needs of the person interpreting the word.  I want Alien 5, so for me, I interpret the word to mean the Derelict was a nonviable source due to restrictions placed on the Auriga.  It serves my agenda and desire to see an Alien 5 someday so it works for me.  But I'm certainly not going to deny the possibility that the Derelict was a nonviable source due to the eggs being sterile.  In the end, it depends on the individual and whoever ends up writing the story for the next movie in the Alien series.  That person will have their own agenda and desires and if this question needs to be addressed, it will fall to that person's interpretation and agenda.

Nicely put.

[Local Trouble]

Assuming the eggs on the derelict survived the explosion, the fallout and if Ripley was unable to nuke it from orbit, maybe the ECA and ICC simply quarantined LV-426.  The potential legal consequences may have been enough to deter the company from sending any ships there.

200 years later, perhaps it remained under strict quarantine and even the Auriga couldn't go there.

[SM]

Res novel says the AP explosion rook it out.  WYR simply reinforces this so ne need to get hung up on words like 'nonviable'.

[Local Trouble]

Are the novelizations canon?

[oberonqa]

As I have made my agenda and intentions clear, allow me to hope that the WYR gets a little retcon in regards to the fate of the Derelict.  =)

[Local Trouble]

SM would never allow that.

[SM]

Full context:

Alien Resurrection novelisation - A.C. Crispin

It was too bad they didn't have more historical information.  Gediman considered it a scientific tragedy that they couldn't go back to planet LV-426, where the Aliens were originally discovered by the Nostromo crew.  The wealth of information that must have been there!  But the derelict with it's bizarre cargo of thousands of eggs had been destroyed when the reactor of a damaged atmospheric processor had exploded, leaving nothing behind but radioactive waste and a crater nineteen megahectares in size.  LV-426 would never be habitable again.

Ripley had escaped the destruction of LV-426 with a few others, but had ended up on Fiorina 161 when her ship malfunctioned.  A single warrior Alien has emerged there, waiting for the Queen that Ripley had unknowingly harbored.  But that warrior had been destroyed, and Ripley had committed suicide to ensure the Queen inside her would never emerge.

That might have been the end of human contact with the Aliens, since all attempts, both by military scientists and private corporations, to discover the Aliens' planet of origin had failed to turn up a single clue, in spite of the hundreds of surveyed worlds that existed.  The secret of the nearly perfect organisms had died in the holocaust on LV-426, until the discovery of Ripley's preserved blood and tissue samples from Fiorina.

Weyland Yutani Report - S.D. Perry

Despite the best efforts of the Colonial Marines and the
direct management of a Weyland-Yutani executive, poor
leadership and inexperience doomed the rescue mission from
the outset. Regrettably, the hive and the Weyland-Yutani
colony were vaporized by the meltdown of the processor,
costing the Company billions of dollars. The derelict craft
was rendered nonviable for further specimen collection.

If Fox come out and change things (which might've been the plan with Blomkamp) all well and good.  Until then - some fresh cherries to pick...

[Russ840]

I personally take the WYR as gospel at the moment. I don't really consider novelisations to be canon. I know that word annoys some but they have differences to the films so I can't see them as canon.

[OpenMaw]

200 years later, perhaps it remained under strict quarantine and even the Auriga couldn't go there.

They're a black project. They have no qualms about cloning humans, experimenting on dangerous alien DNA, kidnapping and experimenting on innocent laborers... They can, technically speaking, do whatever they want. You can't tell me they couldn't send out a retrieval team with special equipment, or that it wouldn't be easier to get their hands on some synthetics to go out there and get an egg from the derelict if it was still there.

[SM]

Dunno if there are any synthetics at this point.

[Local Trouble]

If Fox come out and change things (which might've been the plan with Blomkamp) all well and good.

What makes you think that might of been the plan?

200 years later, perhaps it remained under strict quarantine and even the Auriga couldn't go there.

They're a black project. They have no qualms about cloning humans, experimenting on dangerous alien DNA, kidnapping and experimenting on innocent laborers... They can, technically speaking, do whatever they want. You can't tell me they couldn't send out a retrieval team with special equipment, or that it wouldn't be easier to get their hands on some synthetics to go out there and get an egg from the derelict if it was still there.

I'm sure they would if they thought they could get away with it.