Forum: scifi.stackexchange.com
Tags: <alien-franchise><alien-1979>
Title: What's the meaning of the fossilized engineer in the Alien space jockey scene?
Question: Despite watching  Prometheus  and understanding the purpose of the navigation machine, I'm still not sure what was the significance of the space jockey in  Alien , specifically...   Why was the engineer fossilized in the chair?  Why did the engineer's bio suit show an outward explosion?

Answers:
sents: text: The Space Jockey is there as a form of world-building, while also establishing some foreshadowing.
text: By including an unknown alien there, it shows that the in-universe situation is larger than the characters or audience is aware, that there is something more that's happened there.
text: The specific point of having its suit show damage that was directed outward shows that something bad happened to it, and it was unexplained.
text: Weapons usually attack from outside inward, but that wound suggests something happened from inside outward.
text: Why was the engineer fossilized in the chair?
text: To show the great deal of time that had passed since it had died.
text: Something bad went down here, and no one came to retrieve/save them in that long time since it happened.
text: Why did the engineer's bio suit show an outward explosion?
text: It was because the Space Jockey got infected by a facehugger.
text: Then a xenomorph grew inside it, and burst out of its chest.
text: By showing this before the facehuggers were discovered, it foreshadowed the threat they posed to the humans.
text: This is very similar, thematically, to the start of the classic film
text: The Thing when the Norwegians fly in and try to kill the dog.
text: They both foreshadow a cycle of infiltration and eventually death.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/None/
score: 33
sents: text: An out-of-universe explanation : the Space Jockey was meant by designer H.R. Giger to be a biomechanoid creature fused to its chair and inseparable from it by design .
text: The Engineers from Prometheus are thus a retcon; the Jockey wasn't originally meant to look so humanoid, or meant to walk away from its seat.
text: Unfortunately, I don't have a primary source for this, but secondary sources : Quotes by H.R. Giger:
text: "The creature we finally ended up building is biomechanical to the extent that he has physically grown into, or maybe even out of, his seat, - he's integrated totally into the function he performs.
text: "
text: "The pilot is conceived as one of my biomechanoids, attached to the seat so as to form a single unit" Quote by Brian Muir (one of the movie's sculptors):
text: "I have fond memories of working with Giger.
text: He explained to me and my colleague Peter Voysey that the pilot and cockpit were to be as one, as if merged together.
text: The inspiration for the final Space Jockey design is one of Giger's earlier drawings from his books Necronomicon , where the biomechanoid nature of the creature is apparent:
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/770/Andres F.
score: 15
sents: text: Why was the engineer fossilized in the chair?
text: He was there for a long time.
text: Why did the engineer's bio suit show an outward explosion?
text: The space jockey was infected by a Facehugger, so an Alien chest-buster had made his way out of his torso and bio suit.
text: What happened to this Alien?
text: He probably died from boredom.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/45/DavRob60
score: 6
sents: text: Because despite whatever Scott might claim today, his intention wasn't for the "space jockey" to be one of a race of 9 ft tall anatomically perfect humans.
text: The implications are quite clear: The "space jockey" was some bizarre life form (engineered or not) to be attached to that station in the ship, never to leave.
text: Even to get up and go to the bathroom.
text: We're not even seeing a suit, but some sort of (endo?)
text: exo-skeleton.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/7603/John O
score: 1
sents: text: It wasn't a suit in Alien , that was the alien itself.
text: The suit thing was just a retcon in Prometheus which someone has already mentioned.
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/13617/Space Jockey
score: 1
sents: text: It means that the ship and the Space Jockey were in LV-426 for maybe hundreds of thousands or millions of years.
text: The outward explosion shows that a facehugger attacked the being, and maybe the reason it crashed landed on LV-426
answer_details: author: scifi.stackexchange.com/users/74389/user74389
score: 0

Summary of the answers:
It means that the Space Jockey and ship had been on LV-426 for a great deal of time since death.  The space jockey was infected by a Facehugger, so an Alien chest-buster had made his way out of his torso and bio suit.   This may have been the reason for the crash landing on LV-426.
The Space Jockey is infected by a Facehugger and outwardly explodes. The Space Jockey’s suit fossilises to show the amount of time that has passed since his death.