Maytag Jr., president of Miami-based National Airlines in 1962, predicted by 2000 the airline would be providing supersonic service from coast to coast "so fast the clocks will tell passengers they have arrived in Los Angeles before they left Miami." Marines' MV-22 Osprey, but nothing used in commercial aviation. Today, those visions recall military aircraft like the Harrier jump jet and the U.S. They envisioned an airport consisting of square "pads" where aircraft would land vertically, eliminate the "runway bottleneck." Those air controllers figured jet aircraft would give way to rockets and "manned missiles," and imagined air traffic towers reaching far into the sky, from where they could control all flights by remote. Meanwhile, predecessors of technicians at the air control center in Miami, saw vast changes in air traffic control and aviation. There haven't been any manned missions to the moon since the early '70s. NASA's space shuttle program has managed 100 missions over the past two decades, and is now deep into efforts to build an international space station. Stewart imagined "atomic-powered" aircraft shuttling soldiers and equipment anywhere in the world within minutes, and saw the moon as a "major military base for our space vehicles, securing and exploring the planets beyond." Stewart, commander of the Air Force's 19th Bombardment Wing at Homestead Air Force Base - now Homestead Air Reserve Base - foresaw a constant military presence in outer space aboard manned, orbiting stations and atomic bombs replaced by weapons using "light rays and sound waves." Significantly, the widespread use of the home computer, creation of the Internet and the influx of Hispanics and other immigrants, which changed the face of many cities in Florida, were not among the predictions.Īn FAA administrator in Georgia predicted people in 2000 would fly to and from work in their own aircraft, "as we now use automobiles," and believed trips to the moon and other planets would be "routine." The predictions were not entirely off, many seeing a world saturated and improved by technological advances, though some now seem straight out of pulp science fiction novels.
The letters inside the time capsule, buried on June 6 of that year to mark the dedication of the FAA building northwest of Miami, were made public Tuesday. That's how some of South Florida's leading executives, high-ranking military officers and government officials envisioned the dawn of the 21st Century - in 1962.įor 38 years, letters containing their visions of the future lay encased in a metal box locked beneath 16 inches of reinforced concrete and buried five feet underground outside the front door of the Federal Aviation Administration's Air Route Traffic Control Center.
MIAMI - They didn't see the Internet coming, but imagined if the world survived a nuclear holocaust people would be flying to work in personal aircraft, dialing each other up on phone numbers assigned at birth and cancer would be history.
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