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Consider the defensive technique used by our neighbours to the south of the border. The Whitehouse is not easily hidden. Would-be invaders might seek to destroy it in an effort to snip off the governing head of the country. Unfortunately for them, during a national emergency, they will never catch both the captain and the first officer in it at the same time. If anything, attacking the Whitehouse during an invasion is playing into the hands of hte defenders.

Boarding would be very expensive in the future.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8gfGhVL3qs

Edit: To get the key combinations above, I had to type épée and watch my fingers

Four looks right to me

And yes, we're somehow on the same of similar pages for the capitalization

Yes... I was thinking "The Great One" could be a title... though it's not exactly. A title is something someone else can gain, right? No one else (in our lifetimes) can ever gain the title of the Great One. I heard someone once asked to be 99 and they said no... 98 was as high as he was allowed to go.

You could counter that equally, no one in our lifetimes can gain the title "Caesar" or "the Hun" which kinda blows my logic out of the water. Let's pretend that retired titles are no longer subject to the exclusion rule of being gainable, shall we?

Now here's an interesting page:
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/educat … lize-words
(section marked "meaning is key")

This page suggests perhaps we don't only capitalize White House because that its name, but we might also be giving it proper noun meaning.

Consider:
a. Wow! Look! It's the Sonic Screwdriver! (wrong)
b. Wow! Look! It's the sonic screwdriver! (correct)
(Personally, I consider (a) to be the right choice if we're talking about Dr Who's screwdriver. To me, (b) is correct if the rest of the sentence is "...used by Baker on the set of the 3rd season." which establishes non-uniqueness)

And I ask you to think back to the Highlander. Ignoring the movie title which is a title and is uppercase, the person who's from there would take lowercase. "The highlander" would appear to be the correct case, no different from "the lowlander" or "the uptowner". And then the H/highlander completes his journey before the credits roll, he raises his sword in victory and yells:

I am the one!

Is "the one" a formal title (Hey guys, I'd like to introduce you to Bob the One)? I suspect no.
Is it a job title? Kind of, but lets rule that out for the sake of the children.
By all logic, "one" should be lowercase in the above sentence. Yet, I'm tempted to capitalize it (assigning it proper noun status).

We have a fair over here called "The Ex". The true name is "Canadian National Exhibition" but they call themselves "The Ex" (a name - so capitalized). Now here's the kicker. If I wrote on my fb wall "I'm going to the Exhibition" everyone reading it would automatically know I'm not going to some random museum exhibit.

Is Exhibition capitalizable because it's part of a proper name (CNE)? Lets try it with other words:
"World Poker Tour" -> "Tour" (See you next week, I'm going on the Tour)
"World Wrestling Federation" -> "Federation" (Guys, I got tickets to the Federation!)

Similarly, if I write "I'm moving West" people assume I mean Alberta rather than the other side of my city.

Aha, but what about the ozone layer? By the ephemeral "rule of one" it should be the Ozone Layer, right? I bring this up because while researching this reply, I discovered that there's no common accepted capitalization for the first moon landing. If I read "Bob thought about the Moon Landing" I suspect they mean the first one, but I'm not too sure. I would argue that moon landing is not unique enough to retain its capitalization any more. Similarly "the lunar surface" seems to trump "the Lunar surface" but I can find examples of both in scientific journals.

What about Ragnarok? It's the end of the world... or is it unique enough to be the End of the World. After all, the world can only end so many times, right? I'd argue that no, it's very hard to establish Ragnarok's uniqueness short of surviving it, which would invalidate it.

The briefcase in Pulp Fiction is often capitalized on the web, but I would suggest it shouldn't be. It's not a proper noun, even in the movie iirc. It would appear to follow my "exhibition" declaration in that it's  term that when used, all the user's peers understand which object is referred to. It appears to break the concept I've built here.

How that for a non-answer?

Here's an interesting page:
http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/capit … ation.html
(they don't quote their sources. Hmm!)

Anyway, this page suggests

(The stress is mine)

Also, it suggests a job title takes capitals if it follows the word. This would seem to suggest:
"I am Adam, Prince of Eternia"  <-- suffix = caps
vs
"The prince of Eternia spoke" <-- prefix = optional caps

heh... ya "the only one case" I was complaining that your style guide overlooked it.

Wayne Gretzky is the Great One, not the great one as the guide would imply.

Now that I think of it, once you have a reasonable ring going, new matter that coincides with it for a few decades (eg the cosmic blink of an eye) will be worn down with the efficiency of coarse sandpaper. Ejected particulate matter will benefit the ring. A win for everyone except, possibly, the captured planetoid

I don't have an equation and Amy's right... a small planet cannot sustain planetary rings however there's no reason some moon didn't have a collision and get powderized, forming rings that only last 2-3000 years

I did consider the rescue ship trying to match velocities with  Apollo... and you don't even want to see the equations (however, I can come up with an answer assuming we can give the relative initial speed). The troublesome factor is that the rescue ship is headed towards the engagement and the rescuee is headed away. This means that their relative velocities are doubled.

Now... just before you breathe a sigh of relief, there's a second problem: Their relative momentums are greatly different. The problem is the large mass of the giant rescue ship thrusting one way... and the relatively tiny rescuee puttering the other.

Imagine the Titanic or an air craft carrier attempting to turn and pursue some guy heading the opposite direction on a jet ski. The larger ship would probably take 10-15 minutes just to do a 180. That freak on the jet ski is going to be a speck in the horizon by then. The Law of Convervation of Momentum says that a ship 1000 times bigger must work 1000 times harder than the smaller ship to change direction. You have that working against you here.

PS: I'm okay that the characters think it.

http://picpaste.com/equation.jpg

I have a monitor with bad caps. Every time it flickers I think about pulling an njc and soldering replacements in