Why did the folk of Hadley’s Hope not send a signal?

[paxromana]

From the Script:
              BURKE
                    Well, the corporation co-financed
                    that colony with the Colonial
                    Administration, against mineral
                    rights.  We're getting into a lot
                    of terraforming...'Building Better
                    Worlds.
The scene is where Burke is trying to convince Ripley to go back to Acheron

[Local Trouble]

And Fury is a work prison, not a colony.  The ECA would have no jurisdiction over it.

[St_Eddie]

Okay, so Hadley's Hope was co-financed by the Government and Weyland-Yutani and that means that communication with an outside element would technically take longer than communication from a prison, why exactly?  The communiction from Fury 161 was with Weyland-Yutani and was instantaneous.  Given what Simpson says regarding communication from Hadley's Hope, it's implied that they are communicating with Weyland-Yutani, not the Government...

SIMPSON: "Christ. Some honch in a cushy office on Earth says go look at a grid reference in the middle of nowhere, we look.

Not that it should matter who Hadley's Hope was communicating with, as either the company or the Government would be a viable channel to communicate to.  In fact, Hadley's Hope being a joint operation only means that they should have had two separate entities to ask for help.  Having said that, it's a moot point because even if it took weeks for a message to be transmitted, the company still would have received a message before the marines set out for LV-426.  Ergo; no message was sent.

[Local Trouble]

This is from the Alien 3 novelization:

Andrews didn't like working the Communicator. Every use went down in his permanent record. Deep-space communication was expensive and he was expected to make use of the device only when absolutely and unavoidably necessary. It might develop that his judgment would not agree with that of some slick-assed bonehead back at headquarters, in which case his accumulated pay might be docked, or he might be denied a promotion.

[SiL]

it's implied that they are communicating with Weyland-Yutani, not the Government...

SIMPSON: "Christ. Some honch in a cushy office on Earth says go look at a grid reference in the middle of nowhere, we look.

He just says "some honch", he doesn't at all intimate who they regularly talk to.

Ergo; no message was sent.

Yes, and exactly way is irrelevant to the plot of the film.

[paxromana]

I think Andrews was communicating with the Patna and not the Headquarters

[Stitch]

They must have been a lot closer to Earth, considering that the communication from Fury 161 was instantaneous and considering that people are claiming that it takes two weeks for a transmission to reach anyone from Hadley's Hope.  Odd then that the escape pod Ripley was in crash

Just want to point out that nowhere is it stayed that it takes two weeks for the transmission to reach anyone. It takes two weeks for Hadley's Hope to get an answer, but that doesn't necessarily imply that it's taken a week for the answer to arrive.
If they're building better worlds, then they probably have a lot of other worlds to deal with. Anything that isn't important won't necessarily get an answer straight away.
I've had customer service emails take months for a definitive reply, and that's not because it's taken ages for the transmission to go through, it's just a backlog.

[SiL]

All we know for sure is they didn't send a message and that the link between Operations and the comms tower was cut. The script explicitly said it was damaged in the fighting, the movie doesn't.

So at as some point, fairly early on in proceedings, communication got interrupted and nobody could patch it before they got overrun.

Obviously that's vague, but it's as much explanation as the film needs.

[St_Eddie]

This is from the Alien 3 novelization:

Andrews didn't like working the Communicator. Every use went down in his permanent record. Deep-space communication was expensive and he was expected to make use of the device only when absolutely and unavoidably necessary. It might develop that his judgment would not agree with that of some slick-assed bonehead back at headquarters, in which case his accumulated pay might be docked, or he might be denied a promotion.

Okay, so to apply that logic to Aliens; an alien infestation on Hadley's Hope wouldn't be a time where contacting the company would be "absolutely and unavoidably necessary"?  Or was Simpson more concerned with potentially jeopardizing a promotion than saving the lives of his colonists and even his own life?

Yes, and exactly way is irrelevant to the plot of the film.

It's only irrelevant to the plot because if they had sent a transmission, the plot wouldn't happen.  That's why it's contrived that they never sent a transmission and that's why it's a narrative issue.

Just want to point out that nowhere is it stayed that it takes two weeks for the transmission to reach anyone. It takes two weeks for Hadley's Hope to get an answer, but that doesn't necessarily imply that it's taken a week for the answer to arrive.
If they're building better worlds, then they probably have a lot of other worlds to deal with. Anything that isn't important won't necessarily get an answer straight away.
I've had customer service emails take months for a definitive reply, and that's not because it's taken ages for the transmission to go through, it's just a backlog.

Absolutely, I agree.  It wasn't me who said that a transmission takes two weeks to reach its destination.  It was an excuse invoked by others within this thread, so I was humouring that line of logic and responding to the theory.

All we know for sure is they didn't send a message and that the link between Operations and the comms tower was cut. The script explicitly said it was damaged in the fighting, the movie doesn't.

So at as some point, fairly early on in proceedings, communication got interrupted and nobody could patch it before they got overrun.

Obviously that's vague, but it's as much explanation as the film needs.

Would you happen to have the line mentioning this from the script?  I'd be curious to read it myself.  Regardless, it's very contrived that the comm tower was damaged early on during the infestation.  Even then, you'd think they would have sent a message out after Russ Jordan came back with a facehugger attached, or at least once the grown xenomorph started killing colonists.

[Local Trouble]

Also from the novelization:

Andrews sat back in his chair, his eyes cutting into his guest. 'At 0700 hours I received a reply to my report from the Network. I may point out that to the best of my knowledge this is the first high-level, priority communication this installation has ever received. Even when Fiorina was a working, functioning mining and refining operation it was never so honoured. You know why?'

Clemens sipped his tea. 'High-level priority communications have to go through subspace to beat the time problem. That costs plenty.'

Andrews was nodding. 'More than you or I'll ever see.'

[St_Eddie]

Also from the novelization:

Andrews sat back in his chair, his eyes cutting into his guest. 'At 0700 hours I received a reply to my report from the Network. I may point out that to the best of my knowledge this is the first high-level, priority communication this installation has ever received. Even when Fiorina was a working, functioning mining and refining operation it was never so honoured. You know why?'

Clemens sipped his tea. 'High-level priority communications have to go through subspace to beat the time problem. That costs plenty.'

Andrews was nodding. 'More than you or I'll ever see.'

Firstly, I'll say that citing the novelisation is dubious, given that Alan Dean Foster was putting his own spin on things.  It's essentially expanded universe material.  Secondly, I'm not sure what point you're making.  To reiterate; surely an alien infestation on Hadley's Hope is an extremely valid reason to send a message, no matter how costly.

[Local Trouble]

Oh, I agree.  I'm just putting it out there for whatever it's worth.

However, the colonists may not have realized that their colony was infested before it was too late.  Hadley's Hope was a lot more ground to cover than the Nostromo, so it may have taken a while before anyone actually saw a fully-grown soldier and lived to tell about it.

At first, they may have simply thought the aliens were small, snake-like pests.  Dangerous and gross, sure, but perhaps not worth pressing the panic button.

[SiL]

It's only irrelevant to the plot because if they had sent a transmission, the plot wouldn't happen.  That's why it's contrived that they never sent a transmission and that's why it's a narrative issue.

It's not contrived. The film tells us communications were cut and that no message was sent. The film offers no explanation as to when or how communication was lost and frankly it doesn't need to - the colony was under attack by Aliens, the colonists were weary to talk to Earth, the management didn't seem particularly interested in its job. The specifics are irrelevant - the film paints the picture that shit went down in such a way that the colonists didn't reach out.

That's perfectly fine as exposition. Not everything needs to be explained in explicit detail to make sense.

Would you happen to have the line mentioning this from the script?  I'd be curious to read it myself. 

It's the same line Bishop says in the movie, but he says "...damaged in the fighting" instead of just damaged.

Oh, I agree.  I'm just putting it out there for whatever it's worth.

However, the colonists may not have realized the colony was infested before it was too late.  Hadley's Hope was a lot more ground to cover than the Nostromo, so it may have taken a while before anyone actually saw a fully-grown soldier and lived to tell about it.

At first, they may have simply thought the aliens were small, snake-like pests.  Dangerous and gross, sure, but perhaps not worth pressing the panic button.

This is my preferred explanation. A mixture of incompetence, arrogance undoing the entire colony.

[Local Trouble]

Purely speculative, but it's also possible that they suffered their own comedy of errors, just like the marines did.

[SiL]

And this is kind of the point I'm driving at - we don't know the specifics, but there are so many ways it could've gone down that they couldn't get a message out that while it's fun to speculate it ultimately doesn't matter. That's why it's fun to speculate.

The film explains as much as it needs to and we're free to play in the resulting ball pit.