Reasons for Engineer in Hyper-sleep?

I wonder the exact same thing and can not come up with a logical explanation why. I think it is a plot hole. With all of the slick direction and beauty of this movie otherwise, a lot of us wound up passing over that very important fact or error, whatever it is. Maybe there will be an explanation in Paradise next time around, but for now we are left with insufficient information to arrive at a reasonable conclusion.

I guess this assumes that the Engineer that survived knows about the infection, or does he? Perhaps he was in cryo pre-outbreak. Others have said that the other chambers show signs of 'chester-buster' breakout, I haven't been able to catch that yet, does anyone have a screen grab showing the other cryo-chambers as broken?

A date stamp on the holograms would be help to establish when the Last Engineer's takes place,,,especially comparing it to the running engineers scene, Actually why are these two movies-within-a-movie even shown? Why these scenes at the times they pop up in our story's plot? Speaking of the other pods in the Orrery I don't think David is shown to actually going to them for even a quick examonation. When our Last Engineer wakes up,,he shows no interest or concern for his other crew members right there in Orrey. Were the holograms actually staged to lead our crew members down the right path..for some unknown reason? Still more questions than answers.

In the absence of more info all we can do is speculate and intuit. I don't think the holographic records are staged. but apparently they are activated by David's tinkering with their controls. As far as the decision to show them at a given point in the story, they serve to move the story along faster by providing critical info just when needed most.

I might as well have my opinion join in with you all. I think the hyper-sleeping Engineer had completed his assignment and having, maybe, done this many times over, and no other assignment/tasks to do, prepped (being among the first of his people to do so) himself for hyper-sleep. Just an opinion.

You may be right Subsume, but considering how this script was cobbled together with input from Jon Spaiht, Damon L. ,Ridley Scott and others, it could have easily been overlooked. They had a lot of pieces to stitch together to result in a coherent story.

"..and no other assignment/tasks to do, prepped himself for hyper-sleep...." You make a good point Subsusme..in human terms it has been awhile since his last duty. But in the Engineer's time frame maybe not too bad. To that would reveal a highly trained individual withput any need for family connections, This would sort of describes android,,programed to do his duty when called upon. In our world if there is not a technologial development that doubles every 40 years,,those Engineer that developed this system must have felt they were at the top of the Univerdal food chain, no need for futher development until the Prometheus came along.

@The Wanderer [img]http://i45.tinypic.com/21acyso.jpg[/img] [img]http://i49.tinypic.com/mhtues.jpg[/img]

This is the last Space Jockey fleeing towards the hypersleep chambers. [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CktlWx6ia1E&feature=watch_response]Your text to link here...[/url]

maybe that's why the engineers left the maps in the Earth...to awaken the last one :p