Alien (franchise)/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

** Weren't they just overloading the engines or something instead?

** The mechanism is turning off the reactor coolant. Destroying the ship will deny it to pirates or other hostile companies, or it might prevent it from hitting an inhabited planet, so it isn't much of a stretch to have a regular procedure for doing it.

**** I suspect that any current ship with a reactor would be substantially destroyed by bypassing the safety systems and turning off the coolant.

* A more prosaic question: The self-destruct mechanism makes a certain amount of sense. And it also makes sense that triggering it would be a very complex procedure. But why make the crew reverse the *ENTIRE* procedure to override the self-destruct, under a tight countdown? That's almost like no override at all. A single button push, or at least a simple code entered on that control pad, should have been sufficient. Really dumb planning there.