Why O'Bannon was right . . .

Inspired by another post on Walter Hill and David Giler, I would like to know if anyone agrees with DanO that their rewrite was not an improvment, at least story wise. Especially when it comes to Ash. The problem is that it makes the whole sending humans to LV-426 rather ludicrous. It is clear from both the movie and novelization that the company knew this was a hostile life form, deadly. Now, they have all these androids running about and can easily send a smaller, cheaper vessel manned by a few Ash types to investigate, pick up and return to some colony off earth for further study/research. It is not as if the Nostromo just picked up the signal when the crew was awoken. There was no need for these men and women to be the ones to get the life form. No need to lose how many billions of dollars in equipment and oil, which they knew was a distinct possibility, in fact the likeliest one. The various explanations fans have made read more like rationalizations to make the story stick when the addition of Ash, while adding some suspense and the great Ian Holm, makes the Company seem both evil and stupid. Having said hat, the Giler/Hill screenplay does improve greatly on the dialogue and pace. What do you think? What makes more sense . . . Mother picking up a signal that it truly can't decipher resulting in a crew that decides on its own to investigate or the evil company planning the whole thing?