A question about Aperture Science?

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Ok, In Portal 2 you hear Cave Johnson refer to his company as the 'Second best research company in the world' (Followed by 'Black Mesa can kiss my ass' implying that they are considered the best). Why is this? Because the way I see it Apertures technology appears to be far more advanced than Black Mesa's. Think about it, in HL1 (which I believe is set in the early 21st century) they are just getting to the brink of controlled teleportation, whereas Cave-era Aperture (Which is supposed to be back in the 70's I think) they already have that technology in handheld form (the portal gun). As well as highly advanced AI personalities, boots that can allow you to fall 100's of meters without injury, experimenting with gene augmentation (killer mantis men, peanut blood etc.), substances like the repulsion and propulsion gels, and their own private moon missions.

Have I got my fact wrong? Are we not supposed to take anything in Portal as canon? (which seems unlikely considering all the Half Life references in it) Or have Valve made an uncharacteristic mistake with their story?

 

[Kyle Roberts]

I think it was at black mesa took some of apitures equipment and used it for there stuff.
I may not be 100% sure.

 

[bam13302]

aperature didnt go to another dimension

 

[Silver]

They did lose a whole bunch of astronauts, and killed a bunch of folk, and got stuck in court at least once. Black Mesa also produces nice and shiny weapons for the army.

A friend and I got a bit confused by it during our playthrough though. If they did have the portal gun back then, they shouldn't have the financial problems they did, but if they didn't, it'd be rather hard to finish the tests (though most of them look as though it might be possible given functional limbs, and a bit less broken parts). The portal gun isn't actually mentioned until the moon rock samples being ground up, but it's implied that they've had it for a while.

There might have been an earlier, very crude version of it at that time instead.

 

[bificommander]

Because Black Mesa didn't kill of so many people due to incompetence... untill they killed most of the world due to the events of HL1 and HL2, but by then there weren't many science companies or people to compare them left.

And the fact that Apperatue Science rarely tries to market their products, and markets them for deadly foolish purposes when they do (The gels). Had they just used a portal gun to open two portals above each other so everything keeps falling through in an endless loop (like every player has done), it'd be the work of a few hours to turn it into a free energy power plant by extracting some of that kinetic energy at every fall through (If you drop a strong magnet in that loop and surround it with a copper spool, you can probably get electrical energy).

And yes, even in their 50's lab they had the portal gun, although according to the drawings near the test chamber, it came with a huge backpack.

 

[artanis_neravar]

You never actually know what Black Mesa has created, but in the process of developing the portal gun Aperture Science went bankrupt. Also i don't believe that the portal gun was ever made public so that wouldn't have been included in the decision of who was the best company

 

[Billabong Pobblecock]

You never actually know what Black Mesa has created, but in the process of developing the portal gun Aperture Science went bankrupt. Also i don't believe that the portal gun was ever made public so that wouldn't have been included in the decision of who was the best company

well when they do go into retail i will be happy to buy a portal gun. i'm sure it will only cost several million dollars

 

[Xirema]

A friend and I got a bit confused by it during our playthrough though. If they did have the portal gun back then, they shouldn't have the financial problems they did, but if they didn't, it'd be rather hard to finish the tests (though most of them look as though it might be possible given functional limbs, and a bit less broken parts). The portal gun isn't actually mentioned until the moon rock samples being ground up, but it's implied that they've had it for a while.

Noticed that too.

I recall hearing that beack in AS's past, they had a backpack mounted portal gun, so perhaps they had similar, yet retro technologies back then.

On the other hand, I always imagined that they were designing these tests with other features that broke down after the fact, were the portal gun not invented until the "Everyone is sick with lunar dust" phase.

 

[Silver]

That infinite energy thing might not work. We're never actually told how much power the portal gun drains, or where it gets it's power from. There might be some super battery in the gun, the walls themselves might be conductive. Making an infinite loop might drain more power from somewhere than you get out of it.

But yeah, the whole poisoning of your staff and letting the computer take over might not have been in their shareholders best interests.