Another 1 minute take on AC from a real scientist. Sorry if it poos on our parade lol

Potentially there could be things that would make some Question Alien Covenant,  but i think we can find some reasons for why things have to happen... to drive the Plot.

Often things like this have to happen, unless we have a 3 hour movie which things can be done on the slow burner.

Neomorph

Consider the Antonov aircraft, the really BIG one seen in the movie 2012. It is a real plane, not just a fictional vehicle in the movie, just to say as preface to further points.

Antonov Cargo Capacity: maximum takeoff weight of 640 tonnes (710 short tons).
An-225's pressurized cargo hold is 1,300 m3 (46,000 cu ft) in volume;
6.4 m (21 ft 0 in) wide,
4.4 m (14 ft) high
43.35 m (142 ft 3 in) long

So there's the massive payload handled. :D

The Hard part of getting off Earth is all related to engines and thrust.
You don't need enormous thrust, not if you have engines that can maintain a lower but constant thrust and adapt to the changing conditions as you transition from atmo to space.

Gravity is not an issue, as planes fly and gravity lessens as you climb in altitude, and some cargoplanes carry staggeringly massive payloads with NP, as shown above. Thus, you just need engines that can match the thrust of the cargoplane engines, but can operate in vacuum.

Once you have the engines, then you literally just have to fly up into space, NP.
Rockets need to do it all in one burst, get all the speed and inertia all at once due to the limits of the engines and fuels involved which are combustion-based and insanely inefficient, and it works, but has it's problems as we all know.

Radiation comes in two types:
Particle and Waveform/EM/Ionizing
Particle radiation is relatively easy to stop, using layered materials like boron and carbon types, but waveform is much tougher to stop.
The only way to really cope with Waveform radiation is Thick, Dense shielding, like Gold/Lead/Osmium...or guide it around the object being protected, which Metamaterials can do.
Metamaterials have been shown to be able to bend microwaves, IR and visible light.
X-rays and Gamma are the same as Visible light, just higher energy states. Metamaterial research and advance is happening VERY rapidly and some new experiments have shown they can bend X-ray and Gamma radiation quite effectively.

Gold LOOKS great, but it's HEAVY...and in thin layers vs High-energy Particle radiation it'll cause Secondary radiation in the form of X-rays which the crew/vessel would be subjected to.

The future isn't up to NASA or the governments anymore. Space is the province of anyone who wants to set up a company to engage in such. Yeah, it's early days yet, like air travel at the turn of the 1900's, but look how that developed over time, and it was driven not by governments, but by private enterprise. ;)

BigDave

I like that idea better...keep them in there, facehugger falls off, everything seems OK, they get let onto the ship...
Yeah, your idea works, very well...the only thing it crunches is the SP-937, but not so much if he pronounces Kane as 'fit' after an exam, then chestburster happens, Ripley questions him as seen in script and movie...so, yeah, your idea doesn't derail anything, all remains intact, and the audience gets no warnings about SO-937 until chestburster time and questions after it :D

BigDave

Biggest problem with film was summed up by Hitchcock:

"The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder."

Hence, Director's Cuts and the DVD experience at home.

Hell, no "real" colonizing/terraforming mission would ever just suddenly divert to "maybe" a better planet (despite said planet not having gone through the massive vetting that an original planned "homeworld" would go through) on a hope and a prayer that it "might" be better, either.