"Film me I'm here! Film me! I'm here, film me! Come on do it now!"

[SiL]

Except in ALIEN it was made clear that the corporation itself wanted the Alien.

And if they'd still been interested, they would've gone looking looooong before Ripley came back

Burke was probably acting under instructions from higher up.

Burke makes it very clear he's acting out of self-interest.

[Kimarhi]

The huge time gap was evidence imo of the company trying to cover the first encounter with the alien up.

You don't just tell the public, "yeah, we totally sent those guys to get snacked on."  The lawsuits would be enormous.  The faith in your company would be forever tarnished.  You'd lose more money than you lost with the Nostromo and the crew's salaries.

Media awareness would most likely be up for awhile about a commercial ship that just vanished.  You don't go poking around Acheron with sets of eyes watching you.

Of course there's the whole counter argument that both messages were TRULY automated.  The first being sent to dallas through mother only after mother intercepted the transmission, the second when the mother cpu detected the alien on board.  Both already being embedded in the mother unit just in case something ET happened.

In otherwords, the company never knew directly what it was dealing with UNTIL Ripley told them, ash was just a coincidence, etc.  Then the two squads of marines gets wiped out and the company is like, "hmm, maybe chick was right."

If it hadn't been for Ash's involvement, maybe.

[Xhan]

Except in ALIEN it was made clear that the corporation itself wanted the Alien.

And if they'd still been interested, they would've gone looking looooong before Ripley came back

Burke was probably acting under instructions from higher up.

Burke makes it very clear he's acting out of self-interest.

"a bad call?"

"exclusive rights"

"Signed, Burke Carter J."

[DoomRulz]

Except in ALIEN it was made clear that the corporation itself wanted the Alien.

And if they'd still been interested, they would've gone looking looooong before Ripley came back

Couldn't the argument be made though that since Ripley did come back, the company was able to get info on what happened, then when they heard about the incident on the colony, having Ripley would make it easy to come up with an excuse to go back?

[SM]

Why would they need an excuse?

[DoomRulz]

Make it seem legit for going there, I dunno.

[Johnny Handsome]

I still find it curious why the hell they chose that particular planet for a colonization. I mean what was it about the planet? Its a dull, hostile piece of rock with nothing to earn, whats the point.

[SM]

Going by the novel methane makes for easy terraforming and LV-426 had methane in spades.

[SiL]

But why settle there?

Although I guess in the future "Because we can" has become a pretty viable justification for multimillion dollar ventures.

[SM]

Because it had lots of methane I guess.  Maybe those sorts of planets aren't common.

[SiL]

Yes, but ... why settle there?

I could go live on an island in the middle of the ocean if I took the right supplies with me. But why bother?

[MadassAlex]

Appropriate facilities for Alien retrieval en mass, perhaps?

[AvPvTerminator]

Because everywhere else is overpopulated? I always thought that was the real reason.

[SiL]

Appropriate facilities for Alien retrieval en mass, perhaps?

So why not build the colony closer to the derelict, and once it's built and the air is breathable, send in a specially designed team?

[MadassAlex]

Can't make the operation too obvious concerning the first point.

As for the second, it's unlikely that specialised teams exist for containing something they know almost nothing about.