The Ultimate Flying Machine: Sexy as a Sports Car, Portable as a Jet Ski

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 9:00 pm by Carl Hoffman

On the shore of Lake Isabella, about 150 miles north of Los Angeles, a crowd of flight techs, most of them either pierced or tattooed, swarms around a small white airplane. It's called an Icon A5. It's a collaboration between an F-16 pilot and a skateboard designer, and it looks like an odd, rakish sea monster.

Today is the plane's first flight. Aeronautical calculations, computer simulations, and wind tunnel tests have been performed, of course. And yet ... every maiden flight is a dance with death. If all that math was foolproof, after all, no one would need test pilots.

At 6:30 am, the winds are calm. Jon Karkow pulls a parachute over his shoulders, hugs his girlfriend—a long embrace with whispers exchanged—and clambers into the cockpit; the A5 is remarkably stable on the water for something with a knife-edged underside. The tech crew chief closes the cockpit and gives the carbon-fiber skin a few pats; Karkow fires up the propeller and taxis the A5 out onto the lake.

Back on the beach, a square-jawed guy with closely cropped hair watches, frowning, his arms crossed. Kirk Hawkins started Icon Aircraft, and he has spent the past five years designing and building the A5. It's a plane like no other—the wings fold at the push of a button, making it easy to store and trailer. The side windows pop out so pilots can feel the wind, and the cockpit has just a few gauges. Meant to evoke something sporty, like a jet ski, instead of a lumbering Cessna or a tough-to-fly experimental kludge, the plane is supposed to let anyone who can afford the $139,000 price tag become a barnstormer. In a few weeks, a prototype will be on display at the Experimental Aircraft Association's annual show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin—mecca for air enthusiasts. If the A5 flies today, and flies well, it could create a new market for airplanes.

Former F-16 jockey in Iraq, Kirk Hawkins is bringing barnstorming to the masses.
Photo: Andrew Zuckerman

In a way, the A5 was made possible by the Federal Aviation Administration. In 2004, the FAA implemented the most far-reaching change to aviation rules in 50 years by creating an entirely new category. Dubbed light-sport aircraft, the category is a sort of intermediate designation between those small private planes parked at every regional airport in the country and flimsy-looking, ultralight "experimental" craft, which are built from kits and flown by the seat of the pants. Hawkins' A5 is cheaper than the former and more consistent than the latter, and if the economy doesn't put an end to the purchasing of expensive toys, Hawkins thinks A5s are destined for the top of the wish lists of the Ferrari-and-speedboat crowd. "Those kit-built airplanes are like early PCs," he says. "They're cool, but there's nothing easy or intuitive about them. The Icon A5 is going to be completely different."

The FAA has long had strict certification rules for aircraft and pilots. Anyone who wants to sell a new type of plane has to spend tens of millions of dollars on tests and paperwork for the Feds. At the same time, becoming a pilot takes fortitude and a big bank account: A certificate to fly a private, single-engine piston aircraft requires a complete exam by an FAA-certified physician and a minimum of 40 hours of instruction (running almost $10,000). And why would you want to? The myth of barnstormers in open-cockpit machines landing and taking off at will, of flying as the ultimate expression of freedom—like Denys Finch-Hatton soaring over the Great Rift Valley in Out of Africa—is mostly a lie. Even small airports are surrounded by chain link and security gates, and private pilots in "controlled airspace"—above 18,000 feet near busy airports—have to file flight plans and do what air traffic control tells them. It has all the charm of driving on a freeway.

Over the past few decades, all that regulation and cost have nearly killed innovation in the small aircraft market. In 1978, the US produced more than 14,000 single-engine, piston-powered airplanes. As of 2007, that number was 2,000. A classic of the genre, the Cessna Skyhawk, is a slow, ugly beast that, save for a few refinements, looks today just like it did when it was introduced in 1955.

The A5's wings fold at the push of a button, making it as trailerable as a jet ski.
Photo: Andrew Zuckerman

Luckily for wing nuts, the FAA also certifies experimental planes. Pilots can fly just about anything, as long as they build it and fly it themselves. This is where most of the innovation in small-craft aviation has come from in the past couple of decades: fabric-winged two-seaters and carbon-fiber kit planes with clean aerodynamic shapes and customized performance. Today, one in seven single-engine piston airplanes is experimental. Putting one of these kits together is hardly a minor project, of course, and when you're done you still have to get a pilot's certificate.

The new light-sport category makes it much easier for amateur fliers to take to the air. Planes in this class must have just one engine, and maximum airspeed is 138 miles per hour. Sport pilots must stay below 10,000 feet (lower than most jetliners) and fly only during the day, in clear skies and away from busy airports. But that's still a lot of room to barnstorm. And wannabe pilots need only 20 hours of instruction to get certified.

Giants like Cirrus and Cessna are rushing to bring out light-sport airplanes; Cessna has already taken more than 1,000 orders on its new SkyCatcher, which won't be delivered until the end of the year. It costs about $112,000, half what the next-lowest-priced Cessna does. Unfortunately, it also looks like a baby Cessna, and most of those orders are headed straight to flight schools as entry-level models. Meanwhile, the light-sport designation has been a magnet for entrepreneurs. In just five years, a flock of upstart companies have introduced almost 90 planes that meet the new standards.

Hawkins wanted a piece of that market. To explain why, he offers to take me flying. "Look," he says, muscling a tiny airplane off the beach in his bathing suit and Nike water shoes, "flying is fun! Or it's supposed to be, anyway." Our aircraft is an Aventura II—it's amphibious, like the A5, but made of aluminum tubes covered with fiberglass, Dacron, and Kevlar. It looks a little like a 7-foot-tall ostrich head.

And Hawkins looks a little like someone dreamed up by the guys down in marketing. As a boy, he wanted to be an astronaut. He grew up racing motocross and jet skis, then spent a summer as a bush pilot in Alaska. After the first Gulf War, he flew F-16s over southern Iraq—and came home to get master's degrees in engineering and business from Stanford. He's 41, frequently wears untucked striped dress shirts and Diesel jeans, and possesses the smooth, fighter-pilot cool that's tough to pull off unless you actually are a pilot.

Icon A5 Specifications

We squeeze into the cockpit, just big enough for the two of us, and when I rest my elbow on the open window I notice that it's a mere 8 inches down to the waterline. Hawkins fires up the 100-horsepower motor. In seconds we're airborne, skimming over the lake at 85 mph, the wind in our hair. Hawkins yanks and banks in crazy circles, flies 2 feet over the ripples, plays chicken with brown hillsides, and falls into formation with a flock of pelicans. "When you see hawks, they'll engage with you!" he shouts over the noise of the prop, climbing toward a pair of vultures at 500 feet. "We could go camping at the next lake over! We could land right there and have a picnic!"

Hawkins dives toward a dirt road that runs alongside the lake. He's grinning, laughing; we both are, and for the first time in my life I feel like, well, like I'm really flying and not just cruising in a tin can.

"Flying like this is easy. Anyone can do it," he says, giving me the stick and telling me to bring the Aventura into a level buzz above the water. "Night. Weather. Flying into LAX while working the radio and avoiding traffic. Those are difficult," Hawkins says. "Stick-and-rudder basics are easy. I could teach you to solo in five hours. You couldn't fly at night or in congestion or in the fog, but you wouldn't take a jet ski out at night in a shipping lane, either."

Actually, the Aventura is one of those kit planes, just one step up from ultralights, and it's anything but easy. You have to devote hundreds of hours to building it yourself, and it still costs $70,000. Getting it from your garage or hangar to a body of water for takeoff means putting on and taking off the wings, a process that can take two people four hours. And although it's a simple airplane, it's fickle to fly, looks and feels flimsy, and is uncomfortable. Hawkins' plan, then, was simple: Keep the fun. Fix the rest.

On a balmy night in Los Angeles a month before the A5's maiden flight, 500 people gather in Icon's parking lot. The bar is seeing a lot of action, and motocross videos loop on big LCDs. This is the official unveiling of the A5, wrapped for now in black silk.

Olympic snowboarder Shaun White, the Flying Tomato, is knocking back beers in skintight black leather pants and skater sneakers. Further contributing to the X Games vibe, Troy Lee, a celebrity in the world of motocross and mountain biking, is chatting with fellow Icon board members. There's tech guru Esther Dyson, an early Icon investor. And there's Dick Rutan, brother of aviation visionary and X Prize-winning SpaceShipOne designer Burt and the first person to fly around the world nonstop on a single tank of gas. None of them have seen the plane yet.

Every switch and button of the Icon A5 became a design exploration
Photo: Andrew Zuckerman

When the FAA announced its new rules, Hawkins was getting his second Stanford degree, in the Sloan business program. His engineering experience had left him infatuated with the power of design, and the light-sport changes made him think he could build a truly sexy airplane—one designed for a high-end consumer instead of a traditional pilot. Why have a complicated instrument panel and glass cockpit when all you were going to do was fly around a lake on a beautiful day? "Flying had this complex, regulated-transportation mentality," Hawkins says, "but the best flying I've ever done was always at low altitudes with the window open. I wanted to make a great flying airplane that creates an emotional response but isn't intimidating, that makes you want to fly it, like driving a great sports car."

Using his biz school assignments as an excuse to do market research, Hawkins became convinced of an "enormous pent-up demand" for light aircraft, and the industry naturally welcomed his enthusiasm. "Cessna wants more share of the same old market," says Dan Johnson, president of the Light Aircraft Manufacturers Association. "Icon wants to break into a whole new one."

Hawkins' approach to starting an aerospace company was more Boing Boing than Boeing. In a class called Ambidextrous Thinking, he met an ex-banker named Steen Strand, who would later invent a skateboard that could slide and skid like a snowboard. Dubbed the Freebord, it went on to sell 70,000 units; Hawkins brought him in for that cult design expertise. "I wasn't a pilot, and that seemed a big no-no to me," Strand says. Before he can explain how he got over that obstacle, our conversation is interrupted by pulsing music and flashing lights; it's time for the unveiling. Hawkins whips off the black shroud. There's the A5, painted in gleaming silver and red.

"Every switch and button on the plane became a product of design exploration," Strand says, giving me a tour of the plane a few minutes later. "Airplanes have always been about form following function, but if you look at a snowmobile or a jet ski, there's a lot of stuff that has less to do with function than with aesthetics and the way it makes you feel. A Cessna is the product of a completely different culture." Which is clear the minute Shaun White steps up to the plane. "Dude, I so want one of these!" he says, tossing his mane of red hair. "I've always wanted to fly, and I could get to Mammoth in, like, an hour. Then I'd really be the Flying Tomato!"

Back on Lake Isabella, as the A5 motors out to the middle of the water, Steen Strand and his design team watch with surprising calm. "To design an airplane that consumers want in a flight-weight vehicle is hard," says Matthew Gionta, Icon's VP of engineering. He spent 13 years at Scaled Composites, Burt Rutan's aerospace company. He was slated to lead the design of SpaceShipTwo when Hawkins brought him to Icon.

First of all, the A5's cockpit had to be roomy, but the fuselage aerodynamic. As an amphibian, it needed a tapering, knife-edged lower hull so it could hydroplane quickly, but it also had to be stable and wide enough to swim and jump from. Then, making it trailerable meant giving it folding wings, which add weight and complexity the same way a hardtop convertible weighs down a car. "The laws of physics don't change," Gionta says. "And a lot of airplanes aren't very easy to fly. With this, every force has to be the same in pitch and roll so it's smooth and fun and predictable." Gionta looks out at the water and the taxiing plane.

Seconds later, the A5 rises up on its hull. And then, with no apparent effort, it lifts from the water like a gull. "Nice," Strand says.

Behind the stick, Karkow makes a long, wide loop, just 10 feet above the lake's surface, and then slides smoothly back down onto the water. It takes all of 90 seconds. "Totally badass!" Hawkins barks. "We've got a Porsche 911!"

Two hours later, Karkow takes the plane up again. It's another short hop, but this time he rises 70 feet off the lake and swings a lazy circle around us. The A5 looks steady and smooth, a solid piece of professional engineering. Karkow brings it lower and banks into a gentle turn, taking one more small circle before dropping back onto the lake with a splash, to more cheers and whoops. "No surprises at all," he says as he climbs out of the cockpit. Which is what every engineer wants to hear.

There's a long test program ahead, but for now Hawkins is armed with prototypes and a video that he can take to Oshkosh to generate buzz and orders. (He'll get 70 at the air show a couple of weeks later.) Despite his market research, no one knows if fun-loving guys outside the Oshkosh crowd will actually buy A5s, especially in the midst of a global financial meltdown. "The economy is terrible right now," says Joel Peterson, chair of JetBlue Airways and an Icon investor, "but there are enough pilots out there that even if he gets a small market share, it'll be enough. And anyway, Kirk is an extreme-sports guy, and no one personifies the market like him."

As the airplane slides from the lake onto its trailer, Hawkins splashes around the shore shaking hands. Then he gathers his staff for an important announcement. "We're out here on the water," he says, "and we've got two jet skis and a speedboat. Anyone wanna go wakeboarding?"

Contributing editor Carl Hoffman (carlhoffmn@earthlink.net) wrote about Canadian diamond mines in issue 16.12.

Mr. Know-It-All: Human Guinea Pigs, Cremains in Orbit, Surveillance Video

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 9:00 pm by Brendan I. Koerner

Dear Mr. Know-It-All, I'm a college student who makes money volunteering for medical experiments. Do I have to accept whatever fee the researchers offer me, or can I negotiate for more?

In principle, you're entitled to the same economic rights as the researchers, who likely spent long hours pleading for more dough from whatever drug company is footing their bills. So don't let the doctors guilt you into thinking that it's somehow unethical to treat guinea pigging as a regular job rather than a selfless calling. If they were the ones getting poked and prodded and restricted to bland food, they'd be keen to secure a fair wage, too.

That said, your odds of receiving a raise are practically nil. The supply of willing test subjects far exceeds the demand, a situation that puts human guinea pigs at a serious negotiating disadvantage. And since budgets are usually set long before the call goes out for volunteers, the researchers may not have much wiggle room.

Bob Helms, a veteran participant in clinical trials who edited the now-defunct zine Guinea Pig Zero, says he has managed to negotiate a higher fee only once, for an experiment that was unusually agonizing. (It involved catheters and pooping in baskets.) Helms banded together with his fellow test subjects and threatened to break protocols or drop out altogether, eventually persuading the experiment's sponsor to offer an $800 bump.

If you feel strongly that a study's hassles merit extra pay, Helms recommends waiting until the experiment has commenced before making your case. Having borne witness to your distress, the researchers may turn sympathetic and cough up some cash. Just don't expect to be invited back—assertiveness is not a valued trait in your line of work.

Illustration: Christoph Niemann

I've heard that it's possible to have cremated remains launched into space. Sounds fantastic, but what happens if the rocket explodes before escaping the exosphere? Will my heirs get a full refund?

Your descendents won't receive any money back, but you will be granted a second shot at celestial interment free of charge. The company that runs these missions, Celestis, is a subsidiary of Houston-based aerospace company Space Services. Celestis arranges to stash remains-filled containers on commercial satellites or scientific probes. (The ashes of astronomer Eugene Shoemaker, for example, were placed in a NASA lunar explorer.)

But only a symbolic portion of each client's remains is blasted into space—1 to 7 grams, depending on which memorial package you buy. That thimbleful represents less than 0.1 percent of the total ashes created by cremation. "We do not launch the entire amount of cremated remains because such a service would be cost-prohibitive to the consumer," says Charles Chafer, CEO of Space Services. Indeed, getting a single gram of ashes into deep space costs a minimum of $12,500. (You get a price break if you want to make your final journey with a partner—the two-participant Gemini Capsule Option starts at $18,750.)

The upshot: If the rocket explodes short of orbit, there will be plenty of your cremains left on Earth to mount another mission. Celestis will give you top priority for the next launch, and your heirs won't be billed for the do-over. In any case, it may take a while for your remains to join those of Timothy Leary and Gene Roddenberry: Celestis has flown only seven missions since its founding in 1997, and two of those flights failed.

I was recently robbed while withdrawing money from an ATM. As the victim, do I have a right to see the bank's surveillance footage of the incident?

Whether or not to share the video—assuming it exists—is entirely up to the police. The video is now evidence, so even if you approach the bank directly, the request would likely have to be approved by the detective assigned to the case. And his top priority is catching the bad guy, not helping to heal your psychological wounds.

Still, cops are generally sympathetic to requests along these lines, so if you ask nicely—and don't come off as some Charles Bronson-style vigilante—you can probably sneak a peek. "The police usually work with a victim, unless they believe it is a false report," says Tom Lekan, a bank security expert at The Atlantis Company, a consulting firm in Cleveland. "Showing the victim the video is not unusual."

Be prepared for letdown, though. Given the typically shoddy quality of surveillance footage, even if the perp didn't wear a mask, he may look like nothing more than a grayish blob.

Need help navigating life in the 21st century? Email us at mrknowitall@wiredmag.com.

Jan. 7, 1851: Foucault's Pendulum Experiment

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 9:00 pm by Randy Alfred

1851: Léon Foucault uses a pendulum to demonstrate the rotation of the Earth. It is the first direct visual evidence not based on watching the stars circle in the sky.

Jean Bernard Léon Foucault was born in 1819. His mother wanted him to become a doctor, but he dropped out of medical school when he made his first scientific discovery: He couldn’t stand the sight of blood.

Without formal scientific training, he worked as a lab assistant and continued tinkering. He used the new Daguerreotype photographic process to take the first photograph of the sun. Together with Armand Fizeau, in 1850 he devised a way to use rotating mirrors to measure the speed of light. They observed that light travels more slowly in water than in air.

Scientists had been trying for two centuries to drop objects from towers and measure their drift as the planet spun beneath them. It didn't work: too quick, too crude, too many interfering factors.

Foucault had an insight. A pendulum hanging on a wire and swinging directly north and south would appear to the observer to slowly move its plane of oscillation as the Earth turned underneath it.

To grasp this, just picture a pendulum at the North Pole. It starts at zero degrees longitude and swings back and forth, as the Earth spins below it. For every hour it's going back and forth, the Earth will have moved 15 degrees of longitude eastward. The effect is less farther away from the poles, but it's still there.

After weeks of work in the cellar of his home, Foucault hung a 5-kilogram (11-pound) pendulum from a 2-meter (6½-foot) cable in January 1851. He observed a small clockwise motion of the pendulum's apparent plane of oscillation. The pendulum was going straight back and forth, but the Earth moved for Foucault.

(Sources disagree on whether the crucial experiment took place on Feb. 6, Feb. 7 or Feb. 8. We've taken the middle course here.)

Foucault refined his apparatus and also derived his "sine law" showing the governing influence of latitude on how much a free-swinging pendulum would move. Specifically, the angular speed (in clockwise degrees per sidereal day) is 360 times the sine of the latitude. A Foucault pendulum will rotate through a full 360 degrees at the North Pole (the sine of 90 degrees is 1), but not at all at the equator (the sine of zero degrees is zero).

Foucault arranged a demonstration for the scientists of Paris on Feb. 3. He told them, "You are invited to see the Earth turn." And so they did, as they watched Foucault's pendulum move on an 11-meter wire at the Paris observatory.

French President Louis Napoléon was a science buff, and he arranged for Foucault to give a public demonstration of his remarkable pendulum on March 31. Under the lofty roof of the Pantheon in Paris, Foucault hung a 62-pound brass sphere on a 220-foot cable. A pointer attached to the bottom of the sphere traced patterns in sand on a low wood platform.

The public was dazzled. President Napoleon soon became Emperor Napoleon III, and he gave Foucault the position of Physicist Attached to the Imperial Observatory. While there, Foucault's work on the centrifugal governor improved the precision of surveying instruments.

Despite Foucault's imperial support, the university-trained scientists of Paris sniffed at him as an untrained upstart. They turned him down several times for membership in the French Academy of Sciences, before finally admitting him in 1865. Foucault died in 1868 at the age of 49.

Source: Various

Twitter Hacker Says Admin Password Was 'Happiness'

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 4:30 pm by Kim Zetter

In an interview with Wired.com, an 18-year-old hacker with a history of celebrity pranks admits to Monday's hijacking of multiple high-profile Twitter accounts, including President-Elect Barack Obama's and the official feed for Fox News.

Air Force Releases 'Counter-Blog' Marching Orders

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 4:00 pm by Noah Schachtman

Bloggers: If you suddenly find Air Force officers leaving barbed comments after one of your posts, don't be surprised. They're just following orders.

Finally, No DRM in iTunes — What the New Deal Means

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 3:41 pm by Eliot Van Buskirk

Steve Jobs and three major labels come to terms on a deal to make music available on iTunes without DRM. Consumers can choose between three price levels instead of the "any song for 99 cents" model the store implemented on day one.

Bright Flash in Space Has No Earthly Explanation

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 1:43 pm by Clara Moskowitz

Astronomers have no explanation for a mysterious bright flash in space observed by several telescopes. Suggestions range from a collision between a white dwarf star and a black hole to an exotic star made out of hypothetical "mirror matter," but none fit the phenomenon, according to scientists at the American Astronomical Society meeting.

Macworld Already a Bummer, With or Without Apple

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 1:40 pm by Mathew Honan

Macworld 2008 did not feature a speech by Steve Jobs, a single revolutionary bit of software, or any surprise product announcements. So really, what was the big deal? Wired explains.

A Who's Who of Doctor Who

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 1:35 pm by John Scott Lewinski

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When Matt Smith stepped into Doctor Who's title role as the 11th Doctor this weekend, he went from British character actor to potential entertainment legend.

The 10 actors who preceded Smith during the sci-fi show's 45-year run are forever linked to the part of The Doctor; some even parlayed the BBC role into a lasting place in pop culture history. Each brought something unique to the role of a benevolent alien traveling through the universe in a stolen time machine, fighting for justice against myriad alien foes.

Smith, 26, will take over from current Doctor, David Tennant, who leaves the show at the end of 2009. Smith, pictured, will first play the Time Lord in the 2010 season.

Hop in the Tardis and take a trip through time with this gallery of Doctors.

1) William Hartnell (1963 to 1966): Hartnell, a veteran character actor known primarily for playing gruff drill sergeants before becoming the first Doctor, went from hostile, mysterious alien to wise and heroic grandfather before stepping away for health reasons.

Distinguishing characteristic: His original anachronistic costume and hair set the tone for his descendants.

2) Patrick Troughton (1966 to 1969): Troughton injected a more playful spirit into the second Doctor, and introduced the spirit of aggressive heroics known in the part today. The talented, quirky actor had a knack for shifting from gleeful mischief to steely resolve in a flash while remaining always compelling.

Distinguishing characteristic: His clownish, "cosmic hobo" outfit was supposedly inspired by Charlie Chaplin.

3) Jon Pertwee (1969 to 1974): An established comedy actor when cast, Pertwee's Doctor might have been the most serious-minded as his exiled and stranded character battled multiple attempts to invade the Earth. The Master (played by Roger Delgado) arrived during this period to torment Pertwee's more active, action-inspired Doctor.

Distinguishing characteristic: Topping off his puffy shirt and smoking jacket, Pertwee's white hair helmet got higher as his tenure progressed.

4) Tom Baker (1974 to 1981): The actor who played the part the longest was also the first Doctor exported to the United States. His performance became sillier as it progressed, but his early and middle seasons pulled down the highest ratings in the show's history, until the show's 21st-century return.

Distinguishing characteristic: Baker has the weird eyes, the beak and a benevolent voice that's kept him working for decades, but it's the 17-foot, multicolored scarf we remember.

5) Peter Davison (1981 to 1984): The youngest actor to play the part until Smith came along, Davison was already a TV star from All Creatures Great and Small when he took the gig. More energetic and manic than Baker, Davison shared the Tardis with a series of younger companions as the show updated its look for the '80s.

Distinguishing characteristic: The fifth Doctor's Edwardian cricket player outfit belied Davison's high energy, and he reportedly hated the costume.

6) Colin Baker (1984 to 1986): A strong actor, Colin Baker was cursed with a poorly re-imagined Doctor-as-arrogant-jerk. As a result, the show struggled and suffered through a hiatus period for the first time in more than two decades.

Distinguishing characteristic: Baker also hated his overdone, mismatched outfit — another symptom of his era's overwrought struggles.

7) Sylvester McCoy (1987 to 1989, 1996): Charming but odd, McCoy packed a lot of authority into his little, gentle-hearted frame. He layered mystery into his performance, but his best efforts couldn't prevent the BBC from canceling Doctor Who after 26 years on the air.

Distinguishing characteristic: McCoy's rich Scottish delivery offered The Doctor's most distinctive voice since Tom Baker's.

8) Paul McGann (1996): Offering a mix of childlike bemusement and heroic urgency, McGann only got to play the part once in an ill-fated American co-production on Fox. But McGann continued on in several audio productions for the BBC and Big Finish Productions.

Distinguishing characteristic: His costume was a mix of Hartnell and Baker, but McGann will always be remembered as the first "leading man" Doctor who got to plant one on the lips of his assistant (Daphne Ashbrook).

9) Christopher Eccleston (2005): An established film and TV star (The Others, Elizabeth), it was Eccleston's job to reintroduce The Doctor to the 21st century. He did so with a tremendous burst of dark, yet heroic and humorous, energy. But Eccleston's stint as The Doctor lasted only one great season before he moved on to other roles in Heroes and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.

Distinguishing characteristic: Promising that his Doctor would not be a "tosser," Eccleston went with simple black and a leather jacket.

10) David Tennant (2005 to 2009): Tennant, the first actor to play the part who grew up dreaming of being The Doctor, was long rumored for the part before taking over from Eccleston. He became the show's first romantic leading man as he clearly fell for his companion, Rose (Billie Piper), but Tennant's Doctor also seemed like the most wounded, haunted and lonely incarnation.

Distinguishing characteristic: Whether it was the suit or his carefully managed hair, Tennant's look was engineered to draw in the ladies.

Online Video-Sharing Sites Score Copyright Victory

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 1:15 pm by David Kravets

Online video-sharing sites get a legal boost after a federal judge rules they are protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, as long as certain criteria are met.

Video: New 3-D Fly-Through of Supernova Remnant

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 12:50 pm by Alexis Madrigal

You can virtually fly through a supernova remnant in this video, courtesy of a new high-resolution data visualization from MIT astronomers who presented the research at the American Astronomical Society meeting.

Pay-As-You-Go Airline Charges by the Minute

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 12:30 pm by Dave Demerjian

A South African startup applies the cellphone business model to airline ticket pricing in a move that could undercut its competitors — if it flies.

Anatomy of a Scream: Bugging Out in 'The Unborn'

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 11:00 am by Hugh Hart

Entomologists save the day as potato bugs crank up the fear in director David S. Goyer's upcoming horror flick. Demons cribbed from Jewish folklore help out some, too.

ITunes Rumored (Again) to Be Going DRM-Free

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 8:31 am by Eliot Van Buskirk

Since the dawn of time, or so it seems, Steve Jobs and the major labels have been at war on two fronts: digital rights management and pricing. According to CNET, negotiations between Apple and the world's three largest record labels may finally have produced an agreement that would give each party its wish.

Ex-eBay CEO Whitman To Run for California Governor

Posted on 6 January 2009 | 6:38 am by Associated Press

Former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman plans to run for governor of California, a person with knowledge of her political aspirations tells the AP.

Judge: Warrantless-Eavesdrop Case Can Continue

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 9:00 pm by David Kravets

A federal judge is keeping alive a lawsuit testing the Bush administration's warrantless-surveillance program adopted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. President Bush is leaving office in three weeks, but the case tests the power of the nation's chief executive — whether the president can bypass Congress.

Jobs' Health Message Makes Little Sense, Experts Say

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 9:00 pm by Brandon Keim

Scientists weigh in on Steve Jobs' recent statement that he has a hormonal imbalance that has caused him to lose weight. What little detail is in the statement is contradictory, they say, and could indicate anything from hyperthyroidism to multiple myeloma.

3 Cheap, Safe Ways to Destroy Deadly Explosives

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 9:00 pm by Kevin Sites

Most wars last just a few years. But the unexploded mines, shells, and bombs they leave behind can last decades. Getting rid of these lurking killers can be painfully slow and prohibitively expensive. That's why Joe Trocino established the Golden West Humanitarian Foundation with the mission of helping locals dispose of ordnance using inexpensive, easy-to-find materials. Here are three of its ingenious techniques.

Mr. BIP (Blow in Place)
Cost: $20

Sometimes explosives are close to people or buildings. That's where Mr. BIP comes in. Just place an inverted tire rim over the bomb, secure it with rebar stakes, surround with sandbags, drop in an explosive charge, and detonate.

Bullet Barbecue
Cost: $245

Construct a steel box, fill with small-arms rounds, and seal shut. Apply heat to the container using a propane, coal, or wood fire. Rather than exploding, the gunpowder slowly "cooks off"—leaving only inert metals, which can be recycled.

Kinetic Extractor
Cost: $15 per pipe

Unexploded tank rounds and scrap metal pipe are common in conflict zones. Luckily, they can be a disarming combo: Drop the explosive round down the proper diameter pipe and the lip of the shell catches, separating the projectile from the explosive primer.

Illustrations: Nate Van Dyke, Photos: Swiss Foundation for Mine Action

Jan. 6, 1912: Birth of the Supreme Tech Skeptic

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 9:00 pm by Tony Long

1912: French social critic Jacques Ellul is born. He will become a thoughtful skeptic who worries about the negative impact of technology on the human condition.

Jacques Ellul wore many hats: sociologist, philosopher, humanist, theologian, law professor. He studied the work of Karl Marx and embraced a good deal of Marxist theory, which he did not consider in conflict with his religious beliefs. The son of an atheist father and Christian mother (.pdf), he was raised without religious training. He became a Christian at 22, and his strong faith — Ellul defined himself as a Christian universalist — underpinned all his work.

In his cosmopolitan family, Ellul grew up with a distrust of statism, which partially explains his attraction to Marx. His dislike of the state did not prevent him, however, from taking an active role in the French Resistance during World War II.

He was the rare French intellectual who remained a provincial all his life. He did not beeline it for Paris, as most of his contemporaries did, choosing instead to remain in the seaport town of Bordeaux, where he was born. He was a professor at the university there for most of his career.

Ellul's ambivalence toward technology was grounded in large part in his religious and social convictions. He believed that "technological tyranny," represented by the increasing encroachment of modern technology into our private lives, posed a threat to both human freedom and faith.

He wrote widely on the subject, including the 1964 book, The Technological Society, which is considered his most important work. Ellul was not critical of technology per se, but with the ways it is used by some to impose their will on others. He was especially critical of the mass media, which he believed is completely manipulated by powerful and generally antagonistic special interests.

He wrote:

One has to wonder what Ellul, who died in 1994, would have made of the internet's long reach.

Source: Various

Air Traffic Control Towers Go From Bad to Worse

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 9:00 pm by Dave Demerjian

More than half of America's air traffic control centers have exceeded their useful lifespan and many have "obvious structural deficiencies and maintenance-related issues," the government says.

Artifacts From the Future: Happy Meal 2013 — Vat-Grown Kobe Beef and Flintstones Ritalin

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 9:00 pm by Steven Leckart

A Happy Meal lunch spread in 2013 is complete with a personal McFryer and assorted dipping sauces from Honey Mustard to BrainSpike and Endorphin Rush.

Milky Way Now 50 Percent Larger, Astronomers Discover

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 3:23 pm by Alexis Madrigal

New, more precise measurements of the Milky Way indicate that it's 50 percent more massive and spinning 100,000 miles an hour faster than previously thought. Scientists presented the discovery at the American Astronomical Society meeting.

Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2008

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 2:32 pm by Aaron Rowe

Stem cells, nanotubes and Martian ice -- these are just a few of Wired Science choices for the top 2008 scientific breakthroughs.

TSA, JetBlue Paying $240,000 to Settle Discrimination Suit

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 2:20 pm by David Kravets

The Transportation Security Administration and JetBlue Airways are paying $240,000 to a District of Columbia man who, as a condition of flying, was forced to cover his Arabic-language shirt. In both English and Arabic, the shirt said: "We Will Not Be Silent."

After an Agonizing Wait, Picasa for Mac Finally Arrives

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 2:00 pm by Michael Calore

Google has released a version of its popular free photo management application for Macintosh computers just ahead of the annual Macworld Expo. Picasa has been available for Windows and Linux for years, and the Mac version is eagerly awaited by those looking for an alternative to Apple's iPhoto.

Lotus Targets Tesla With EV of Its Own

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 1:45 pm by Chuck Squatriglia

The company that helped Tesla Motors and Chrysler build their electric cars is working on a battery-electric that will work just like the Chevrolet Volt but be a whole lot sportier.

Pink Iguana That Darwin Missed Holds Evolutionary Surprise

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 12:30 pm by Alexis Madrigal

A pink iguana overlooked by Charles Darwin turns up on the Galapagos Islands. The iguana's color isn't the only thing that distinguishes it from other iguana species: New research shows that it separated from the others genetically 5 million years ago, much earlier than most Galapagos species.

Top Internet Providers Cool to RIAA 3-Strikes Plan

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 11:43 am by David Kravets

Has the Recording Industry Association of America reached any deals with leading U.S. internet service providers that would terminate service to online file sharers of copyrighted music? Not a single major ISP contacted by Wired.com admitted to going along. And Verizon, with 8.5 million internet subscribers, balked at the proposal.

Habitable Exoplanets Could Be Common in Our Galaxy

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 11:36 am by Clara Moskowitz

Asteroids circling dead stars in the galaxy are made of the same stuff as Earth, raising the likelihood of more habitable, rocky planets. Astronomers used the Spitzer Space Telescope to study six dead "white dwarf" stars, and announced their findings at the American Astronomical Society meeting.

Apple's Jobs Cites Hormone Imbalance for Weight Loss

Posted on 5 January 2009 | 6:02 am by John C Abell

Steve Jobs breaks a deafening silence on his health to tell the "Apple Community" that it is not a recurrence of his pancreatic cancer but a treatable hormone imbalance that is the cause for his noticeable weight loss.