Who designed this crew?

Rating: 10/10 (15 October 2008)

I genuinely love this film, but I have always thought that this was the strangest crew structure in the history of sailing vessels.
I count four officers: Dallas, Kane, Ripley, and Ash. Parker and Brett are clearly "crew". Lambert is a bit of a mystery. She is a pilot (i.e. more skilled than just a helmsman/helmsperson). In the military, that would make her an officer. On a civilian vessel, who knows? Since she shows no leadership ability whatsoever, I'll count her as crew. That's a 4:3 officers-to-crew ratio. Even if one discounts Ash as having no real supervisory authority, it's at least ten times too high.
Wow! How does the "Company" make money? Moreover, there is a lot of living/working space allocated to just seven people. How can one justify a sick bay/science bay that size on the SHUTTLE? And if the shuttle has a sick bay that large, why would it not have facilities to support seven people in an emergency? As they say in Jesus Christ Superstar, "Only wanna know..."