It might help if you think of the Sulaco and the dropship as a single unit. The Sulaco doesn't need a separate crew since it's just being used as a glorified transport vessel, to get Gorman's military unit from A (Earth) to B (LV-426). The comms officer, the pilots and the science officer that fly the ship are all part of that same military unit.

As such, there's no useful purpose in having extra personnel set aside simply to remain on the Sulaco. It's not clear what they'd even do while the military unit is doing their thing down below and in the very unlikely event that they need something from the ship, the ground troops can just travel back up to the Sulaco and load it with only a few minutes notice. They can use the remote uplink (or the colony's satellite) to communicate with Earth if an extreme need arises and the spare dropship can be remotely piloted by Ash if (as happens) the first dropship is disabled and pilots are incapacitated.

In short, lugging around extra people makes no good sense, either militarily or financially.

It might help if you think of the Sulaco and the dropship as a single unit. The Sulaco doesn't need a separate crew since it's just being used as a glorified transport vessel, to get Gorman's military unit from A (Earth) to B (LV-426). The comms officer, the pilots and the science officer that fly the ship are all part of that same military unit.

As such, there's no useful purpose in having extra personnel set aside simply to remain on the Sulaco. It's not clear what they'd even do while the military unit is doing their thing down below and in the very unlikely event that they need something from the ship, the ground troops can just travel back up to the Sulaco and load it with only a few minutes notice. They can use the remote uplink (or the colony's satellite) to communicate with Earth if an extreme need arises and the spare dropship can be remotely piloted by Ash if (as happens) the first dropship is disabled and pilots are incapacitated.

In short, lugging around extra people makes no good sense, either militarily or financially.

It might help if you think of the Sulaco and the dropship as a single unit. The Sulaco doesn't need a separate crew since it's just being used as a glorified transport vessel, to get Gorman's military unit from A (Earth) to B (LV-426). The comms officer, the pilots and the science officer are all part of that same military unit.

As such, there's no useful purpose in having extra personnel set aside simply to remain on the Sulaco. It's not clear what they'd do while the military unit is doing their thing down below and in the very unlikely event that they need something from the ship, they can always travel back up and load it with just a few minutes notice. They can use the satellite to communicate with Earth if an extreme need arises and the other dropship can be remotely piloted by Ash if (as happens) the first dropship is disabled and pilots are incapacitated.

It might help if you think of the Sulaco and the dropship as a single unit. The Sulaco doesn't need a separate crew since it's just being used as a glorified transport vessel, to get Gorman's military unit from A (Earth) to B (LV-426). The comms officer, the pilots and the science officer that fly the ship are all part of that same military unit.

As such, there's no useful purpose in having extra personnel set aside simply to remain on the Sulaco. It's not clear what they'd even do while the military unit is doing their thing down below and in the very unlikely event that they need something from the ship, the ground troops can just travel back up to the Sulaco and load it with only a few minutes notice. They can use the remote uplink (or the colony's satellite) to communicate with Earth if an extreme need arises and the spare dropship can be remotely piloted by Ash if (as happens) the first dropship is disabled and pilots are incapacitated.

In short, lugging around extra people makes no good sense, either militarily or financially.