Sulaco (fictional spacecraft) movie's final battle before the survivors enter cryogenic sleep. In "Alien 3", a fire aboard the "Sulaco" leads to the survivors' cryogenic sleep tubes being launched from the ship, with its further fate unknown. Syd Mead, a principal conceptual designer on "Aliens", first designed the Sulaco as a massive sphere, a "heavily armed cargo ship, outfitted to transport material". James Cameron was not satisfied, as having a spherical model move past the lens would have required variable focus; he produced a quick sketch of the style of ship he imagined and noted that he was imagining something like "a forest
Sulaco (fictional spacecraft) of antennae enter[ing] the frame, followed by the enormous bulk of the SULACO". While some claim that the basic shape was based on a submarine, the design has most often been described as a "gun in space" due to the elongated form resembling the pulse rifles used in the movie—with Syd Mead agreeing that (in addition to Cameron's preferences) this was one of the reasons for the switch from the spherical form. Other film analysts have remarked on how the opening shot of the ship as something sinister and weaponlike presages Ripley's transformation during the movie into a warrior figure,