ALIEN: The Weyland-Yutani Report (S.D. Perry, 160 pages)

[SM]

There's a few on the DVDs.  Can't seem to find a decent one online though.

[Corporal Hicks]

If you can tell me which gallery they're in, I've got all the stills from the Blu-ray capped.

[Xenomrph]

the CMTM gets a hell of a lot more right than it gets wrong, and it has fewer mistakes than the WY Report (despite having 10x the content).

Wasn't about 95% of the CMTM made-up fluff?

That doesn't really change what I said - the stuff sourced from the movie, it does get right much, much more than it gets wrong.

Also the WY Report itself (mostly) doesn't ignore the CMTM report. In fact the size of LV-426 is one of the few things it does ignore (and surprise surprise, it's one of the few things it gets wrong, and then drags the size of LV-223 down with it )

It's hardly wrong if it's going by the source material.

It is if the "source material" is wrong.

To go back to your idea of Calpamos' third moon being a "captured moon" sometime after the events of 'Prometheus', there's a bit of a problem with that idea that occurred to me yesterday.
Like, yes, captured celestial bodies is a thing that happens (it's theorized that many of Jupiter and Saturn's moons are captured bodies), but the problem is that the timeframe for a captured body to settle into a stable orbit is measured in the scale of "thousands to millions of years" and tend to have highly irregular orbits. And in that period where the captured body settles into its newly captured orbit around the larger planet, the captured moon's mass and gravity are going to screw with the orbits of the other moons that are already there.

That isn't to say the third moon being a captured body is outright impossible, just that it's far more likely that the 'Prometheus' filmmakers (or whoever) goofed up or something.

Then again I've never been a big fan of the idea that LV-223 is literally orbiting the same planet as LV-426, it feels really unnecessarily contrived.

Originally I would've gone with the EEVs being at the bottom of the ship, due to the tubes appearing to be sliding down into lifeboat, but that doesn't fit with model we see when the EEV is launched.  Based on the door and ladders, it looks like it's being launched out the side of the ship.  There's a bunch of different factors that I haven't fully considered, but if I were to guess I'd put them midships above the conning tower and forward of the fusion torus.

Not that 'Aliens: Colonial Marines' is a gold standard of film accuracy and quality research or anything, but I can't remember where the game puts the EEVs when everything starts falling apart and people are evacuating the Sulaco (or if we see any getting launched from the Sephora before it gets destroyed).

[Local Trouble]

Wasn't about 95% of the CMTM made-up fluff?

That doesn't really change what I said - the stuff sourced from the movie, it does get right much, much more than it gets wrong.

Do you have an example of something it got right that it didn't fabricate to begin with?

It's hardly wrong if it's going by the source material.

It is if the "source material" is wrong.

If you insist.  I maintain that the source material can never truly be fixed by the EU.

To go back to your idea of Calpamos' third moon being a "captured moon" sometime after the events of 'Prometheus', there's a bit of a problem with that idea that occurred to me yesterday.
[snip]

Then again I've never been a big fan of the idea that LV-223 is literally orbiting the same planet as LV-426, it feels really unnecessarily contrived.

I actually agree with that.  However, yet another possibility is that the third "moon" is actually another large planet and that it and Calpamos are what's known as a double planet.

[Nostromo]

Ok so just to be clear, In Alien it showed 3 Moons and Prometheus 2? What if one was behind Calpamos during its orbit? Some rotate around their host Planet reallyyyy slow. Is that possible or am I missing something? I may have to watch Prometheus again for the tenth+ time this weekend.

[Local Trouble]

Alien showed three other celestial bodies near Calpamos.  One of them was in front of Calpamos so it was obviously smaller and closer.  The others may have been moons, but Prometheus indicates that Calpamos only had two.  The third body could therefore be a large planet in the distance rather than a third moon of Calpamos.

[426Buddy]

So is it not possible that the third moon is simply on the other side of calpamos?

[Local Trouble]

Wouldn't this hologram show its orbital path?

[426Buddy]

Thats right, I forgot about the hologram 

Was only remembering the shot of the Prometheus approaching LV223.

[Nostromo]

I found this somewhere, but it might be outdated information:

"LV-426 (Acheron) is a satellite orbiting the ringed planet Calpamos in the binary star system Zeta Reticuli, 37 light-years from Sol. It is notable for being home to a colony of Xenomorphs, one of the most dangerous parasitic lifeforms in our galaxy. However, they must rely on the chance visit of other alien species like humans or Space Jockeys. (now known as Ossians) No native species are found here.

The Xenomorph eggs are located in a large room in or beneath a crashed Ossian derelict space vessel. Characteristics of LV-426 (Acheron) Although this satellite is only 2,213 miles in diameter, the gravity of LV-426 (Acheron) is about .86 of Earth's, this hints at a very dense metal core, also from the way people are able to walk on its surface after terraforming for extended periods of time, it seems there is a slight magnetic field. There is a temperature difference (though only slight) which is enough to create the almost constant gales here.

Calpamos and its 3 moons, are only just outside Zeta 2's habitable zone. LV-426 formed from a disc of gas and dust that orbited around Calpamos when this whole system was young, a lot of this material clumped together to form the 3 satellites of which LV-426 is the middle one. The inner moon is called Rosto, similar in size and composition to Europa that orbits our Jupiter. The outer moon is called Varda and is an innert lump of rock very much comparitable to Earth's moon. Varda barely has an atmosphere and there is no detectable water.

The ring system surrounding Calpamos may have been formed from the collision of 2 smaller moons several million years ago, or most likely the residue left over from the original disc of dust and gas that never condensed together. The atmosphere of LV 426, is described by Ash as 'almost primordial', and consists mostly of nitrogen, but also methane, carbon dioxide, ammonia and smaller amounts of other trace elements. The temperature is deep cold, well below the line, circa - 111 centigrade."

[Corporal Hicks]

Where did you find that? Ossians?

[Nostromo]

So therefore the maximum size of a gas giant like Calpamos, according to science, is 2x the size of Jupiter, or a diameter of 120,0000km. Therefore a moon the size of Earth is possible.

I was actually wrong here. I was using the radius of Jupiter and not the diameter. Therefore the largest possible size would be 280,000km or twice Jupiter's diameter of 139,822 km.

"Calpamos (117, 925 km), the ringed gas giant that the moon LV-426 revolves around in the Alien series"

Where did you find that? Ossians?

The person who posted that info started his pos like this:

Posted May-12-2012 11:04 PM

I just copy pasted from aliens wiki

[HuDaFuK]

The simple fact is Acheron can't be as small as the deleted scene says it is because it would be visibly curved when you're standing on it, which it isn't in Alien and it definitely isn't in Aliens.

[Nostromo]

Where did you find that? Ossians?

I see more info on Ossians here:

http://aliens.wikia.com/wiki/Mala'kak

http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/Engineer

[Local Trouble]

There's a few on the DVDs.  Can't seem to find a decent one online though.

Here's an interesting pic I found that was obviously analyzed by someone else already.

The simple fact is Acheron can't be as small as the deleted scene says it is because it would be visibly curved when you're standing on it, which it isn't in Alien and it definitely isn't in Aliens.

How could you tell when the planetoid's surface is covered in uneven terrain like mountains and valleys?  Wouldn't you need an unobstructed view of the horizon?

Besides, our own moon is definitely a bit larger than LV-426, but photos of the Apollo astronauts walking on the surface don't reveal any obvious signs of curvature on the horizon.



Or did Kubrick simply fail to take that into account when he filmed it?

What does SM usually say about all this?