Automated Refinery from Alien

[Sniperexpert]

hey all,
If any of you have watched Alien you know that big automated refinery the Nostromo was towing back to Earth? Did the refinery actually land on on a planet,load up on ore then blasted itself back into orbit or was all the ore it was processing hauled up to it by small/medium surface to orbit cargo ships?

 

[small]

from what i can gather it was automated but engineless, definitely nothing on the scale needed to lift it into orbit.

although there isnt anything that says either way, but it looks like they deliver raw materials to it to refine, mostly petrochemicals if i remember rightly

 

[PainInTheAssInternet]

Just by looking at it, I seriously doubt it was capable of landing. The only engines it has seems to come from the Nostromo. I'd imagine that it docks with an orbiting space station that in turn serves as a dock for other ships delivering crude oil which is then transferred onto the refinery.

The Nostromo was grounded for a considerable time (I think over a day) while the refinery was in orbit, so at the very least it's capable of maintaining it.

 

[Sniperexpert]

Just by looking at it, I seriously doubt it was capable of landing. The only engines it has seems to come from the Nostromo. I'd imagine that it docks with an orbiting space station that in turn serves as a dock for other ships delivering crude oil which is then transferred onto the refinery.

The Nostromo was grounded for a considerable time (I think over a day) while the refinery was in orbit, so at the very least it's capable of maintaining it.

The refinery probably has high-powered chemical thrusters to maintain a orbit around a planet if the ship towing it has to detach for whatever reason.

 

[DefunctTheory]

The Nostromo is, literally, a semi-tractor in space. It's highly unlikely that it would haul anything that had any maneuvering capacity of its own beyond orbital maintenance.

And then, of course, there's the problem of how you would get a refinery that has a potential weight of 20 million tons, and is over 1.5 miles long, off the ground.

It's never directly addressed in any of the movies, comics, books, or games, but I really doubt the refinery is anything more then a giant factory that gets parked in orbit around a planet/stellar body to receive raw material, then tugged back to the Sol system to dump its ore, then tugged back out somewhere to get more raw material.