Sulaco-class Ship, Alien 3

[Rumrunner473]

Alien 3 wasn't low-budget by far, so I'm having some trouble understanding why the ship that makes landfall, bringing the W-Y team, looks just like Sulaco.

How could that thing land, especially given the ventral fin? Surely not a cheap cash-saving re-use of an existing miniature?

Thoughts on this?

[deezelboy]

It may not have been low budget, but the studio was very tight with how the finances were deployed.  They allowed only half the effects shots that Aliens had, and there were constant disagreements as to what the budget was to be spent on.  Hence saving some costs by reusing the Sulaco model.

I've no idea how the ship could have landed either. 

[Hudson]

Is it landed when they're shown approaching the complex? I always thought it was just hovering and they lowered the people down by some means.

[BlackWatch]

Yeah, I'm with Hudson, I never thought it was landing. Figured something dropship-style brought the personnel down after the ship entered the atmosphere. Which I know still contradicts what we saw in Aliens but makes more sense than landing a Conestoga Class starship.

[Hieronymus]

Ascending to orbit from atmospheric altitude and lower requires a lot of energy.  Descending through atmosphere also requires a lot of energy if you want to descend slowly enough to avoid the heat generated by atmospheric reentry.  A faster descent is extremely dangerous even if you have heat shielding, and it would be even more dangerous for something as large as the Sulaco (or the Patna, or whatever you choose to call the ship from Alien 3) because it would be far harder for the ship to adjust its vector.  As such, I think it's unlikely that the ship swooped into the atmosphere just to deliver a shuttle.

There's a scene in Alien 3 in which it looks like the Company team is emerging from some kind of hangar door or airlock (memory fails me on the specifics).  I've always taken that structure to be part of the spacecraft on which they arrived, which would rule out a shuttle - the shuttle would have been too large, based on the appearance of the structure, to be carried on the Patna.

However, I suppose they could have landed in a shuttle and we merely saw them emerging from the gate or doorway to the landing pad or whatever.  That would have allowed them to reach the planet using a smaller shuttle or even a dropship.  But that still doesn't explain what the Patna was doing that close to the planet's surface.

What do we know about Fury 161's gravity?  Obviously it has to be somewhat Earth-like; prisoners aren't bouncing around like they're on the Moon.  But suppose we speculate that it has a surface gravity of 0.5 g.  Would that permit a lower, slower orbit?  That would probably also mean a thinner atmosphere (helping to explain how Fury 161 can go from jacket weather to -40° C in the space of five minutes).  That might also permit a lower orbit.

[beckmen]

I think this is all we really see:



Looks like it could be a larger craft of some kind, perhaps similar to the Captain's Yacht in Star Trek: Insurrection.

[Company Man]

I always wondered why with the "lice" problem, or whatever the "parasites" were that forced them to shave, that the dog got a free pass.

I know it is off-topic.

-gets coat-

[Hudson]

I think this is all we really see:



Looks like it could be a larger craft of some kind, perhaps similar to the Captain's Yacht in Star Trek: Insurrection.

I mean...I'm pretty sure that's the Patna.

[deezelboy]

Descending through atmosphere also requires a lot of energy if you want to descend slowly enough to avoid the heat generated by atmospheric reentry.  A faster descent is extremely dangerous even if you have heat shielding, and it would be even more dangerous for something as large as the Sulaco (or the Patna, or whatever you choose to call the ship from Alien 3) because it would be far harder for the ship to adjust its vector.

The spaceships we seen in the Alien films have to have some way around that, though.

The Sulaco is massively FTL - it did 40 light years in three weeks.  Space is pretty empty - maybe only a couple of hydrogen atoms per cubic metre.  But at the speed the Sulaco's going at, it's going to be like plunging through...  Well, I don't really know.  A dense atmosphere?  Water?  Rock? 

I don't know how the ship's are protected (I'd have a guess that the artificial gravity generators they use are configured to give a strong negative gravity immediately outside the ship, pushing the small stuff away fast) but they seemed to have cracked the friction problem.

But suppose we speculate that it has a surface gravity of 0.5 g. 

Might explain Ripley's elongated death plunge.   

I always wondered why with the "lice" problem, or whatever the "parasites" were that forced them to shave, that the dog got a free pass.

MORSE:  Oi, Murphy, your dog's infested.

MURPHY:  Are you gonna shave him?

MORSE:  Fuck no.

[SM]

I always though it landed.  The ventral comms antenna just get stowed somehow.

Doesn't make any sense for it to just 'hover'.

I always wondered why with the "lice" problem, or whatever the "parasites" were that forced them to shave, that the dog got a free pass.

I know it is off-topic.

-gets coat-

Dunno - short haired dog I guess.  In the novel they talk about using shampoo to get rid of the lice but it caused massive skin irritation, hence the shaving.  Maybe the shampoo didn't cause skin irritaion on Spike?

[Company Man]

MORSE:  Oi, Murphy, your dog's infested.

MURPHY:  Are you gonna shave him?

MORSE:  Fuck no.

I have likely seen the movie a hundred times maybe. And I never noticed that before.

[BlackWatch]

Is it only in the SE?

[Hieronymus]

The CM:TM describes FTL drives as converting a ship's mass into "mirror image" tachyons, mimicking the ship's matter in every respect except for which side of the lightspeed barrier it exists on.  I assumed that, like neutrinos, tachyons would interact only very weakly with tardionic matter (anything moving less than the speed of light).  There's no mention of this mechanism anywhere in the films, of course, but it would obviate the need for additional shielding for interstellar travel.

I've also pondered whether the Patna stows its ventral fin somehow - and where its landing gear would be.  Dicking around in Photoshop just now, I've concluded that parts of the ventral fin could retract, but a certain length of it would have to remain outside the ship.  This might serve as a rear landing strut, and it may even be a point of egress and thus the structure we see in A3.  Forward landing struts, at least two, would have to deploy from near the front of the ship; they may be hidden by armor panels or something during spaceflight.

[Company Man]

Is it only in the SE?

Could be, I only own a plain old fashioned DVD, like one released in 1994 or 5..

[beckmen]

I think aside from an errant shot here or there, isn't Spike cut from the Special Edition?