Question: Why was Ripley cloned?
Question: If Ripley was operated on and an alien removed a few days ago, how come they have a fully grown queen who is laying eggs, 8 to be precise as there are 8 people who have been ingested and turned into aliens? But later, when most of the crew have ejected successfully or been killed when a hand grenade was thrown into their escape pod along with an alien, one of the scientists says there are 12 more? How can that be?
Chosen answer: Well firstly the queen was probably genetically engineered, like Ripley herself. A few days might be all the time they need to have a fully grown queen created. Secondly the 8 incubated victims were only the latest batch, they had been incubating people with xenomorphs for quite a time I suspect.
With regards to the quick growth of the alien queen, it is standard for the xenomorph in nearly every film they appear (Aliens is the only exception, the only chestburster shown in the film is quickly killed by Apone) to grow to full size in around one day. Presumably the same is true for the queen.
Answer: In Alien 3, Ripley discovers there was an Alien queen embryo growing inside her, so she chose to kill herself. By cloning her, scientist were hoping the Alien queen embryo she had in her at the time of her death would also become cloned, which finally happen after the 8th try. This is also why the Alien queen they extracted from Ripley has some human traits.
Bishop73