Why would they NOT have anyone on the Sulaco

Same reason you don't leave anyone at home, in case your front door key stops working.

Because space travel is costly, that is a given. While the hardness level of the Alien universe is not relatively all that high and we see interstellar travel approached a bit more casually, it can still be reasonably assumed that if you can have one fewer head in cryo, you do. Hence the Sulaco's heavy automation to begin with.

There were contingencies for the scenario of active dropship becoming inoperable or unavailable:

* use of the transmitter on board the APC to remote pilot the second dropship

* use of the radio hardware present at every Company colony site to do the same, which would ordinarily be trivial to do from any terminal anywhere onsite.

That the redundancy was not more robust in a one-squad deployment like this is probably a factor of USCM's typical mission not containing the magnitude of threats encountered in Aliens to begin with; and especially, scenarios like this radio-silence one on LV426 rarely implying more than a transmitter failure with small possibility of easily-dispatched xenomorph involvement. Hence why it WAS a single-squad operation. A larger deployment in line with an expected larger threat would have contained multiple vessels, multiple squads, multiple dropships and multiple APCs thus having additional redundancy by nature.

Incompetence of personnel is also a huge factor in why this drop went to hell so severely in general and applies here as well. If dropship crew Ferro/Spunkmeyer had only paid attention to securing their aircraft and closed the ramp, shot that single xenomorph as it attempted to enter, or responded appropriately to the slime/resin Spunkmeyer found near the ramp with an armed search of the ship for its source before proceeding; and had thus not been killed, and not crashed, this would not even be a question. It ties into the "typical mission" observation in that I imagine years of responding to technical difficulties and xenomorphic pests/minor threats (bug hunt) has rendered the troops lazy and careless.

I posed that same question months ago. It seemed to be the logical thing to do. If your team got in trouble at least you'd have someone to come to the rescue.

But the Marines did not seem to think that they would encounter any situation which they couldn't handle. Remember how Gorman told Ripley when they paid her a visit in her apartment, "We are trained to handle situations like this."

Clearly he had NO clue what "a situation like this" was. It's a big puzzlement to me. Gorman tells the Marines that they have Ripley's report "on disc" and suggests that they watch it. So did they watch it? Did they take her seriously? And Ripley, knowing how seriously dangerous ONE Alien was, should have been way more forceful in explaining what happened!

When Gorman interrupted her, if I had been Ripley, I would have said, "Not so fast!! You people are tough (as Sargeant Apone said "bad asses" lol) but you have absolutely NO IDEA what you are getting into. Trust me, I saw this thing in action and the worst thing you can do is to be overconfident in your ability and your weapons."

Ripley was sent as a consultant. Sure she was still traumatized but she took on the gig and she needed to get her head out of her butt and impress upon these people what an immensely dangerous creature they were up against. In her explanation to the Marines, she looked like a weepy, weak female who saw some friends killed in an accident instead of explaining what a dangerous killing machine the Marines would be facing.

The Marines went in overconfident and overly sure of their abilities. If Gorman had any sense he would have left one person onboard to send down the other dropship. It was a total screw up all around. I think Burke was somehow responsible for getting someone like Gorman who was clearly over his head, in charge of the mission.

It certainly is a strange future, where the US Military relies so much on its communications and automation capabiltiies it doesn't even need a skeleton crew, much less a crew at all, to remain on their capital ships in space.

The Aliens movie would have been over in the first 45 minutes if the USS Sulaco had a crew that was able to pick up the Colonial Marines after the botched attempt to locate the colonials, so that's probably the main reason Cameron opted for no crew on the Sulaco.

I think part of the problem is that the Sulaco is clearly a huge ship with a lot of extra room, equipment, etc. (not to mention a whole extra drop ship that they apparently didn't bring another flight crew for?), which makes it seem weird that they have such a tiny number of people and no one extra to stay and mind the ship.

It would have worked better if they had made the Sulaco some kind of small fast-reaction scout ship that was cramped inside and only had room for a few marines (and no extra dropship).

After the event of Alien: Covenant they decided that if a fool-hardy promoted member of the team for into a position which could cost the company billions they should all go down to the planet.

Didn't really work out for them though did it?

I never understood that part either. Maybe they needed all hands on deck looking for the colonists? I dunno.. guess the real reason is to have a movie lol

To add to the suspense I imagine. This is done so often in movies. Maybe Star Trek with its crew of 500 anonymous people and how hard it is to write for such a large group caused this. Things break down ... never let everyone leave the ship at the same time. There must always be a maintenance crew that is competent and even has command over the mission. But, if they are so dumb as to open the airlock for people with alien infections ... what difference does it make!?? ;-)