USCSS Nostromo - Blueprints

[Hudson]

I think a poster for Aliens leaning towards a Colonial Marine theme would be pretty badass. Just sayin'. I mean the official posters say "this time it's war" but it's just a black background. How about a lineup of the Marines themselves? 

[Moonpatrol]

Where is the shuttlecraft? I have never been able to find a spot on the Nostromo that looks remotely close to where it sits ion the movie. Did the makers kind of just blow this detail off? Is the shuttle back on the refinery? I really don't see the connection and it has puzzled me a long time. The Nostromo also seems quite small to be towing that huge barge. The propulsion rockets have no room to fire when towing. The movie doesn't explain it.

[Space Jockey]

Where is the shuttlecraft? I have never been able to find a spot on the Nostromo that looks remotely close to where it sits ion the movie. Did the makers kind of just blow this detail off? Is the shuttle back on the refinery? I really don't see the connection and it has puzzled me a long time. The Nostromo also seems quite small to be towing that huge barge. The propulsion rockets have no room to fire when towing. The movie doesn't explain it.

When looking at the Nostromo from the front, the Narcissus is located under the right-hand 'wing' (the area between the Port 'nacelle' and the main body. I'll post a pic in a bit. This was confirmed in conversation with Martin Bower.

As for the propulsion rockets, there are 'ports' on the refinery that were on the refinery model directly behind the Nostromo's location when docked. We had a similar conversation on Propsummit about this and came to the conclusion that maybe the refinery has fuel  and rockets of it's own to aid in travel when the Nostomro is docked, with the Nostromo using it's own fuel and rockets when away from the refinery.

EDIT - You can see the photos of the 'ports' located on the refinery behind Nostromo on Dennis Lowe's website here, 13th and 14th photos down.

http://www.zen171398.zen.co.uk/Alien.html

[Hudson]

By ports, do you mean the sockets that the Nostromo's engines fit into when it's docked into the refinery, or do you mean the boosters that are "directly behind" the ship on the opposite end of the refinery?

I'd like to know why those plugs exist behind the Nostromo's boosters...it's not like the engines fire into that. It'd be pretty dangerous to the ship's cargo if they did, right?

So that would mean that the booster on the back of the refinery have their own fuel supply.

[NERMAL]

The refinery has it's own engines. Dallas refers to these when telling Ripley to "Fire up the 'big ones'" in both the novelisation, and illustrated story.



The Nostromo acts as a command module with independant functionality as required.

[Hudson]

What are those big sockets for that the Nostromo plugs into then? 

[Moonpatrol]

     I don't have a problem with the refinery having some engines on the back, and it looks like it does from the plastic model. Maybe the tug somehow powers them.
     The location of the shuttle shows how large the Nostromo is. I had always thought the Shuttle was somewhere on the backside of the mother ship but it is under the armpit? It would be too long of a run for Ripley to go board the shuttle if it was back on the refinery. The Nostromo windows on both sides of the bridge area seem a little too large to fit the overall scale of the ship. If those windows are 15 feet high, then maybe it would make sense. I'll have to watch the movie again and see if the matte shot of the crew inside the window supports the size of the ship. I know in Star Wars Revenge of the Sith, the princess' silver ship is too small to contain all the elaborate spaces shown inside. It ruined the illusion for me. The only thing with the Nostromo is that it is much bigger than one would think.
     The shuttle escapes in reverse and must traverse out the backside of the refinery to have all that real estate to cover. The Nostromo is not so large that we would just be seeing the underside of it all that time. The best part of the scene is when the refinery shrinks into the distance and the stars stay still. If they had filmed it with the stars moving it would have ruined it.
     On another note about the shuttle , I believe the alien survived the blast from the engine, and was simply pushed out into the vacuum of space where it was totally screwed. I don't think the vacuum would kill, but it would starve or freeze. If Ripley had not blasted it, I think it would have torn its way back inside.

[SM]

We never see the inside of the Refinery in the film.  As Space Jockey said the shuttle sits under the port engine support.   

The shuttle doesn't actually reverse - it just fires it's retros to fly slower the the Nostromo, and the Nostromo flies away from it.

You can try and match the internal sets with the models - but you'd be wasting your time.  Like most movie space ships, the sets and models don't quite fit.

As for the Alien - we see in Aliens that they can suvive in vacuum for lengthy periods.  Whether they can survive indefinately is anyone's guess.

[Moonpatrol]

The shuttle doesn't actually reverse - it just fires it's retros to fly slower the the Nostromo, and the Nostromo flies away from it.

Wow, I see what your saying about the refinery continuing on its course while the shuttle "hits the brakes." We forget how fast that thing is traveling! Ripley was a smart astronaut to realize the quickest way to get away from the ticking time bomb was to jump off the train. It was pretty close according to the clock.

 In all the alien movies, it has been hard to escape these creatures and lots of people die before a way is found that works. It is usually thinking outside the box and quickness that does it. A good line from the movie is when Dallas says, "Parker I don't want any heroics out of you...OK.." This is still at a point when the crew thinks they are going to beat this thing. Its also a little bit of foreshadowing since he eventually charges the creature, unarmed, like a hero (and a fool). It also speaks about how well the captain knew the major personality traits of his crew.

[SM]

He wasn't unarmed.

Nor was he unharmed.

I have a question about the length of the ship.  I just got Alien Vault and noted the length is 1095'.  I'm guessing SpaceJockey actually did the sums rather than relying on the old 800' length?

[alieninchicago]

What direction is the Narcissus originally facing??? Toward the front of the Nostromo? Or towards the back of the Nostromo and refinery?

Glad somebody brought this up! This scene never made any dam sense to me! The Narcissus is moving away from the Nostromo and the refinery. See picture below, Exhibit A. So the Nostromo and refinery should be behind the Narcissus, right? Ripley would not see the whole explosion like she did in Exhibit B. The explosion would be behind the Narcissus and not viewable through the Narcissus viewport. All she would see is some of the light from the explosion. Not the whole explosion itself. I realize Ridley shot this scene to add tension to Ripley's very close escape or the technology was not there to film the scene correctly. But it makes no dam sense!

One question about the refinery. I always assumed the twenty million tons of mineral ore was kept in the towers of the refinery.

Exhibit A


Exhibit B


By the way, here is a cool site for original ALIEN production blueprints! http://www.remington-rand.com/alien/

I wish the owner of the original blueprints would release an over sized book with all the original blueprints like they did for the Star Wars Saga!

[SM]

Insert Quote
What direction is the Narcissus originally facing??? Toward the front of the Nostromo? Or towards the back of the Nostromo and refinery?

As per above the shuttle is facing the same direction.  It detaches and is moving at the same speed as the Nostromo.  It fires it's retro rockets, slowing it down, meaning the Nostromo and refinery race on ahead, thus allowing Ripley to view the explosion through her foreward portal.

As for the refinery - towers in contemporary refineries are for waste gases.



It might be the same in space?

[Space Jockey]

As per above the shuttle is facing the same direction.  It detaches and is moving at the same speed as the Nostromo.  It fires it's retro rockets, slowing it down, meaning the Nostromo and refinery race on ahead, thus allowing Ripley to view the explosion through her foreward portal.

What he said. :-)

The 'sockets' on the refinery directly behind Nostromo (when docked) could be just heatshields - when the Nostromo docks, the rocket nozzles on the back are probably more than a little hot, and maybe having the sockets there on the refinery perhaps restricts the conduction of heat to the majority of the refinery that part of which, holds presumably flammable cargo. Mind you it's cargo is mineral ore, no real clue on how combustible it is but maybe you get the idea.

The length of the Nostromo on the blueprints was a bit like trying to get a line of best fit on a graph.
There is the scene where we see Dallas, Kane and Lambert walking by the landing leg, so we get a little idea of scale - however, when I compared the scale of this area of the ship and the bridge to the area where Narcissus is supposed to be, Nostromo is way too small at 800 ft.
Unfortunately, the Narcissus seems way too small even as you see it under the wing. If I had drawn the 'wing' area of the ship at the scale as depicted on the movie in those scenes, the Nostromo would need to be more like 2000 ft long.
I knew that wouldn't have worked, as then the undercarriage landing leg would have been way too big in relation to a person.

So, I had to reach a compromise between these different areas:-
1. How big the Landing Leg looks in relation to the crew in the Dallas, Kane and Lambert exterior scene;
2. How big the Narcissus looks under the 'wing' as depicted toward the end of the movie;
3. How big the bridge set was in relation to the model;
4. How big the interior of Narcissus is in relation to the Nostromo Bridge set; and
5. Take into account the full size landing leg set (exterior) scene was fimed before the work on the models were completed.

This all gave me a fairly good idea of how big (or small) the Nostromo could be.
It isn't perfect, and there are holes; for instance, we see Lambert, Parker and Ripley head to the shuttle; in a stairwell directly behind Narcissus, Parker and Lambert then decend to C Deck.
However, directly under Narcissus is outer space. So part of the thought in coming up with blueprints (some of us are working on interior blueprint ideas over on Propsummit) is to try to figure out ways that work with what we see on film.

[Space Jockey]

I think a poster for Aliens leaning towards a Colonial Marine theme would be pretty badass. Just sayin'. I mean the official posters say "this time it's war" but it's just a black background. How about a lineup of the Marines themselves? 

I have blocked out an Aliens poster where I'm planning on creating it Drew Struzan style, but I need to save up and get the paint. I used to do alot of acylic and pencil work, but when I can get the paint I don't know. Had to leave alot of it behind when I left Seattle.

[sd40jk]

What he said. :-)

The 'sockets' on the refinery directly behind Nostromo (when docked) could be just heatshields - when the Nostromo docks, the rocket nozzles on the back are probably more than a little hot, and maybe having the sockets there on the refinery perhaps restricts the conduction of heat to the majority of the refinery that part of which, holds presumably flammable cargo. Mind you it's cargo is mineral ore, no real clue on how combustible it is but maybe you get the idea.

The length of the Nostromo on the blueprints was a bit like trying to get a line of best fit on a graph.
There is the scene where we see Dallas, Kane and Lambert walking by the landing leg, so we get a little idea of scale - however, when I compared the scale of this area of the ship and the bridge to the area where Narcissus is supposed to be, Nostromo is way too small at 800 ft.
Unfortunately, the Narcissus seems way too small even as you see it under the wing. If I had drawn the 'wing' area of the ship at the scale as depicted on the movie in those scenes, the Nostromo would need to be more like 2000 ft long.
I knew that wouldn't have worked, as then the undercarriage landing leg would have been way too big in relation to a person.

So, I had to reach a compromise between these different areas:-
1. How big the Landing Leg looks in relation to the crew in the Dallas, Kane and Lambert exterior scene;
2. How big the Narcissus looks under the 'wing' as depicted toward the end of the movie;
3. How big the bridge set was in relation to the model;
4. How big the interior of Narcissus is in relation to the Nostromo Bridge set; and
5. Take into account the full size landing leg set (exterior) scene was fimed before the work on the models were completed.

This all gave me a fairly good idea of how big (or small) the Nostromo could be.
It isn't perfect, and there are holes; for instance, we see Lambert, Parker and Ripley head to the shuttle; in a stairwell directly behind Narcissus, Parker and Lambert then decend to C Deck.
However, directly under Narcissus is outer space. So part of the thought in coming up with blueprints (some of us are working on interior blueprint ideas over on Propsummit) is to try to figure out ways that work with what we see on film.

My take on the socket's are  that they are through port's (Conduit's of sort's) extending from the Nostromo's mainthruster's to the rear of the refinery and that they are used primairly for breaking orbit or major course correction albiet briefly utilised. As for FTL travel the Nostromo Would have to be generating some sort of field large enough to envelope the refinery as well as to allow the refinery to travel faster than light along with it's tug the Nostromo. Recent particle exceleration experiments are barely scratching the surface into the relm of such a field possibility (the Higgs Boson) particle for example. (Tachyon field research) For I believe no amount of thrust would achieve such a velocity.  Kepler discoveries 1,235 in total many false positives, definately light's a fire under my ass to get out there. Research has to be under way. And I'll never live to see it succeed.