Why Engineers create the atmosphere?

Hes more than likley a biological superman - most likely holds breath for ages or can survive longer in that atmosphere - some parts of the film clearly have problems this for me wasnt one of them...

I noticed that too, I have to just put all reason aside and assume they can breathe the atmosphere on the planet even though they created and Earth-like one in their ships and were wearing helmets when they ran around in the hologram scene... Allthough I think they expected Humans to visit sooner or later as depicted by the cave paintings Shaw and Holloway discovered and possibly made the atmosphere breathable in the silos for them. Dunno.

I don't see this part of a movie as a huge problem. As a fan I was just wondering about this issue. Perhaps Engineers can survive longer without air. Who knows?

@Svanya "(..) and were wearing helmets when they ran around in the hologram scene..." That is another "mystery" for me. They wore helmets while running through the corridors but didn't wear them inside the control room.

I took the helmets on in the hologram scene as being to protect against the black goo but didn't seem to help one of them :P !

I think what happens is, the engineer was wearing the mask when he was walking from the juggernaut to the lifeboat. His suit detects breathable air in the lifeboat, so he takes the mask off and enters the room ready to kill whoever is inside. Most likely a better field of vision when you take the mask off

I noticed that when the Prometheus first enters LV 223s atmosphere, they take a reading of the air and Holloway says something like "not much different to back home" then the Scottish woman says something about the Co2 levels and that we wouldn't last 2 minutes. The life boat wouldn't of been 2 minutes away from an angry engineer. Also, he has bigger lungs (i assume) and obviously genetically superior.

@necronom 4; Then why did they take the time to create an Earth-like atmosphere in the building/ship? (Unless they built it for the humans they expected to visit sooner or later as depicted by the cave paintings Shaw and Holloway discovered.) @keep-itreal; I thought of that too, but there wasn't enough time from when he entered the lifeboat to when he attacks Shaw for him to have removed a helmet, also you don't see a huge Engineer helmet on the ground or on a table or anywhere a person would place a helmet.

@Svanya. I'm not saying that he could stay outside for a long period of time, Just enough time to get to the lifeboat. Maybe they created the earth like atmosphere in the temple because they had to live and work in there? *smiley*

@necronom 4; Ok, BUT how could he know what atmosphere was on the lifeboat if any? Why risk not wearing a helmet?

@Svanya. I thought the temple and the ship were in two different locations. One of the temples corridors leads to the juggernaut but that corridor isn't encountered until the last 30 mins of the film when David comes across it. The ampule chamber is in the temple, not in the juggernaut.

Sorry our wires got crossed there. I assume that he was so angry that he just went for it. I think that's the only explination for it.

There's probably quite a bit those brutes can survive that would kill us right off. And Shaw is human, right? So the life boat would be no problem. How he found it, how far he ran, who knows? He's an Engineer. And that one seemed to have a bio mech assist.      I saw here a piece of production art, a cross section of the dome, it's a terraforming device with a huge cistern at the bottom, that's what those holes led to. Someone suggested recently that they were maybe even prepping LV223 for the eventual arrival of Earth people. Great thread N4.

I hope nobody else has posted this answer as I feel it explains it perfectly and rather obviously. In the film Ford says that it would take 2 minutes breathing without a suit on the planet to kill a human. The Engineer's are obviously supierior to humans in every way. I'm sure he was fast enough and had the lung capacity to get from the crash jugg to the life boat without dying. ***EDIT***Damn, necro, you beat me to it lol! I agree 100%. And the Engineer would know that the lifeboat had oxygen because it was a human ship. Why would he assume humans would build a ship with air they couldn't breath. But I do think the theory that the Engineers terraformed inside the pyramid because they were expecting/inviting humans there is interesting. I had something else "important" to state but it slipped my noggin.

Engineering, was it that, "Exhaled human CO2 made the sculptural murals DISSOLVE?" but not the Alien mural? Discuss.

Well its a plot hole unless this explanation is good enough... He can hold his breath long .... lol Nope if indeed the Engineers can survive for longer in the hostile air outside the temple complex... This would then ask why does the Temple and Jugernaught have Oxygen that the crew can breath and also why is it much cleaner in the Temple than on Earth yet Toxic outside? Maybe the Engineers can tolerate mild differences in the atmosphere and so could tolerate for short periods or even longer the atmosphere of LV 223, this does not mean say they could survive in a baron place like say our Moon. This then brings the purpose of the Space Jockey Suit, why need them if the Temple and Juggernaut have Oxygen etc? Unless these suits mainly function as a Bio Hazard Suit that can reduce/stop contamination with the Xeno/Urn Bio Weapon. Thing about it in Alien the Eggs had that Blue Mist Barrier and they was only activated once this was broken, and Prometheus maybe the breathing made by the crew effected the Urns. Yes the suits would act like the Prometheus Crews in that it would allow them to breath in hostile environments but then why the Last Engineer needed one to Pilot the Ship and not when he went across to the Lifeboat. Again maybe he can survive for short periods..., maybe when the Juggernauts leave the planet they can not sustain endless supplies of Oxygen and they need the Suits for when they are in Space. Maybe the running Engineers suited up because they was attempting to exit the Temple Complex, and maybe go to the other Juggernauts to escape.. Who knows... I guess thats off topic as i covered why they need the suits...

So maybe on to why it had Oxygen? Well it seemed like they was doing some kind of Tera-Forming inside the complex but why? Could the process they was using in the temple eventually be used to make the entire Planetoid habitable? This brings us back to the invitation and why the Statue of the Head and why was the movie going to be Paradise? Maybe just maybe this was being set up as a base from where they can monitor mankind and maybe where eventually we can join them on LV 223 hence the Tera-Forming. But after we had disobeyed and upset the Engineers and they decided to wipe us out they then changed this outpost from a watch post to monitor and maybe invite us, to a facility to then create a weapon to destroy us with.

when they find the air is like earth in the "cave" someone on the prometheus says that the planet may can be terraformed... what if Weyland was there before the movie??

Yep, i noticed. And how she walks out from the ship with 30 secs of air when she was in. So stupid gliches. They could fix it by showing the engineer an air mask or something and she changing an air bottle for a sec.

To all There is evidence of a village on lv 223. Is it possible that that this planet was once a seeded world that was xenomorped ? Would black goo kill the plant life that may have been there and this explain the high co2 levels as there is no plants ? Very vague theory of mine - sorta doubt it ! Did the worms come with the juggs - or maybe they are indigenous to the planet - but how surviving goo ? Noo goo 35 000 years ago ! Ah sorry !! Forget it - theory crap again .......

These are all questions we have no answer to. We can theorize all day but it all comes down to the fact that we have no idea. Could the engineer breath the planets atmosphere? How long can an engineer hold his breath? What is the native atmosphere of the Engineers home world? Similar to earth or this moon? If he had to hold his breath, how far away from the juggernaut was the lifeboat? Why were they terraforming? Had they already already been almost complete with the terraforming and something went wrong involving an outbreak? We're they just starting the process when when something went wrong? Why is the atmosphere in the ship like Earth and better? Another thing I saw someone asking, why were the engineers in the hologram wearing suits and the ones in the "control room/navigation room" not wearing suits? Well if you go back and look at the scene. Upon entering that control room you can clearly see 4 suits kind of "hanging up" as if they had taken them off upon entering. So that answers that question right there.

THere was a suggestion that the atmosphere generation was design so that humans, if and when they arrived on this moon, would be able to survive in somewhat hostile world. I sort of like that 'welcome center' approach. What ggod would it be to invite a guest and then kill them off or at the least discourage them from finding out more. Still there muist be more to the presence of humans to start a new atmosphere just for the humans. No I think that when humans presented themselves in the pyramid that a whole series of plans were put into effect. The fact that David was able to move pretty quickly to find the Last Engineer and at least prevent hiom from getting out of the pod too early , before weyland was brought into the picture. And this just one pyramid. Maybe the Creators had the other pyramids designed for other speies scattered around their world that would eventually find their way to this moon. It could be that we were the last species and as a result we , as a species, failed the test and doomed for extinction.

The atmosphere, according to Ford and confirmed by Holloway, has only 3% CO2. Humans have no problems surviving under these measurements. This has been mentioned many times.

Yes the atmosphere has been mentioned many times as being relatively safe. And yet everyscene with the crew in trasnsit shows them with their helmets on. The one scene i didn't see helmets was the last trip to the pyramids where there is jump cut from the inside of the prometheus to the tunnels, There they remove the helmets. It may be safe but not safe enough for crew members to bet their lives on. But it is curious that the engineers and humans can share the same air. It makes me wonder if the Juggernaut's pilot seat would be equiped to let a human suit up so to speak. That would solve any potential travel needs for air.