Quote from: predxeno on Nov 20, 2014, 05:37:59 PM
*sigh* Everyone here seems to keep forgetting that by Aliens' time, Prometheus's technology would be over fifty years old, making it very cheap and very affordable, so why wouldn't Hadley's Hope have tech that would be worth pennies by their time?
We're not forgetting.
The Prometheus ship is part of a trillion dollar venture; yet in
Aliens WY and the Colonial Administration are weeping over however-many million that the Nostromo cost. Also, the Nostromo was
old by 2122; Ridley said in one interview: "I think that the machine that they're on could in fact be 60 years old and just added to over the decades. The metal-work on it could be 50 years old ... I would have liked to see it covered with space barnacles or space seaweed, all clogged and choked up." Talking about the fleet of ships zipping through the universe's spacelanes, he said: "At the culmination of many long voyages, each covering many years, these ships -no doubt part of armadas owned by private corporations- look used, beat-up, covered with graffiti, and uncomfortable. We certainly didn't design the Nostromo to look like a hotel."
The deisgn and story intention behind the Prometheus ship was completely different, it was pretty much Weyland's Air Force One.
There's also a hint of technological or cultural stagnation by
Alien's era, which Cameron alluded to to explain why Ripley didn't have to adapt to any new, wild technology in the 57 years between the first two movies.
Concerning Hadley's Hope, it was deliberately built on the cheap. Nothing fancy. So long as it's functional then it goes in. It's a prepacked, easy to assemble, simple to maintain (in comparison to top of the line stuff) colony. The most sophisticated piece of work on the planet is probably the AP stattion, and that costs considerably less than the Prometheus ship.