Spaceship Earth Full Ride POV - Epcot - Walt Disney World, Florida

High quality video of Spaceship Earth in Walt Disney World's Epcot Center. Shot with a DSLR and GoPro Hero 3 Black Edtion. Spaceship Earth is the iconic and symbolic structure of Epcot, the second of four theme parks built at the Walt Disney World Resort. One of the most recognizable structures of any theme park, it is also the name of the attraction that is housed within the 18-story geodesic sphere that takes guests on a time machine-themed experience using the Omnimover system. The 15-minute dark ride demonstrates to guests how advancements in human communication have helped to create the future one step at a time. Passengers journey back in time to witness the origins of prehistoric man, then travel forward in time to witness important breakthroughs in communication throughout history—from the invention of the alphabet to the creation of the printing press to today's modern communication advancements, including telecommunication and mass communication. At the conclusion of the ride, passengers have the chance to design their own future using touch screens that are embedded into the ride cars.
The structure is similar in texture to the United States pavilion from Expo 67 in Montreal, but unlike that structure, Spaceship Earth is a complete sphere, supported by three pairs of legs. The structural designs of both Expo 67 and Spaceship Earth were completed by Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc. of Boston, Massachusetts.

Geometrically, Spaceship Earth is a derivative of a pentakis dodecahedron, with each of the 60 isosceles triangle faces divided into 16 smaller triangles (with a bit of fudging to make it rounder).Each of those 960 flat panels is sub-divided into four triangles, each of which is divided into three isosceles triangles to form each point. In theory, there are 11,520 total isosceles triangles forming 3840 points. In reality, some of those triangles are partially or fully nonexistent due to supports and doors; there are actually only 11,324 silvered facets, with 954 partial or full flat triangular panels.

The appearance of being a monolithic sphere is an architectural goal that was achieved through a structural trick. Spaceship Earth is in fact two structural domes. Six legs are supported on pile groups that are driven up to 160 feet into Central Florida's soft earth. Those legs support a steel box-shaped ring at the sphere's perimeter, at about 30 degrees south latitude in earth-terms. The upper structural dome sits on this ring. A grid of trusses inside the ring supports two helical structures of the ride and show system. Below the ring, a second dome is hung from the bottom, completing the spherical shape. The ring and trusses form a table-like structure which separates the upper dome from the lower. Supported by and about three feet off of the structural domes is a cladding sphere to which the shiny Alucobond panels and drainage system are mounted.

The cladding was designed so that when it rains, no water pours off the sides onto the ground. All water is collected through one-inch gaps in the facets into a gutter system, and finally channeled into the World Showcase Lagoon.

Narrators
Lawrence Dobkin: October 1, 1982 – May 26, 1986
Walter Cronkite: May 26, 1986 – August 15, 1994
Jeremy Irons: November 23, 1994 – July 9, 2007
Dame Judi Dench: February 15, 2008–present

A VIP lounge, operated by the pavilion sponsor, exists above the postshow area of Spaceship Earth. Employees of the current sponsoring company and their guests can relax in the lounge while visiting Epcot. The sponsor can also hold receptions in the space as well as conduct workshops and business presentations. When Spaceship Earth was without sponsorship from 2004–2005, the room was utilized for private events such as weddings and conventions.[citation needed] The layout is small and curved in shape, with one wall consisting of large windows where visitors can look out onto the park.

When Siemens AG took over as sponsors, the lounge was given the name "Base21". In 2012, the name was dropped and it is now simply known as the "Siemens VIP Center."

Project Tomorrow current attractions are:

An illuminated globe that shows the hometown of all Spaceship Earth visitors for the day.
Body Builder – a 3-D game that challenges guests to reconstruct a human body. Features the voice of Wallace Shawn as Dr. Bones.
Super Driver – a driving simulation video game featuring vehicle accident and avoidance systems. It simulates what is supposed to be the future of driving. You drive a "smart-car" and try to stop the city from being destroyed.
Power City – a large, digital "shuffleboard-style" game that has guest racing around the board to power their city.
InnerVision – a coordination and reaction-time game with elements similar to Simon and Dance Dance Revolution

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Closed Caption:

ok
thank you
good
for your safety
ok
facebook small children
yeah
not me
what
like a grand and miraculous spaceship
are planning to sail through the
universe of time and for a brief moment
we have been among its passengers but
where do we go
and what kind of future will be
discovered
surprising it the answers lie in our
post since the dawn of recorded history
we've been inventing the future one step
at a time so its travel back in time
together
I'll show you how our ancestors created
the world we know today and then it will
be your turn to create the world of
tomorrow
here in this hostile world is where our
story begins
we are alone
struggling to survive until we learn to
communicate with one another
now we can hunt as a team and survive
together
yeah
it takes fifteen thousand years to come
up with the next right idea
recording our knowledge on cave walls
there was only one small problem when we
moved the recorded knowledge state
behind
now let's move ahead to ancient Egypt
because something is about to happen
here that will change the future forever
this unknown Egyptian pounding reads is
inventing the apartments as paper the
paris in turn creates better
recordkeeping plans designs and
unfortunately taxes but it also brings
with it the dawn of great civilizations
in your home at this point
each civilization has its own form of
writing which none of the others can
understand but the Phoenicians who trade
with all of them
evolution they create a simple common
alphabet adaptable to most languages
remember how easy it was to learn your
ABCs Venetians they invented
the ancient Greeks were great inventors
of the future
first they established public schools
and then begin teaching and intriguing
new something called mathematics and
with math comes mechanical technology
and the birth of the high-tech life
we enjoy today important
they have fun
you got up
with lessons learned from the Greeks the
Romans create a powerful enough to move
their arms around they build a system of
roads all over the known world
Rome built the first world wide web and
it's leading us into the future
then we hit a roadblock Rome Falls and
the Great Library of Alexandria in Egypt
is burned
much of our learning is destroyed lost
forever
also we think it turns out there are
copies of some of these books in the
library's of the Middle East being
watched over by Arab and Jewish scholars
call it the first backup system
the books are saved and with them our
dreams of the future
in the meantime here in Europe monks
toiled endlessly recording books by hand
but that is about to change in 1450
Gooden berg invents the movable type
printing press
now knowledge can travel as fast as
these new books and travel they do books
make it easier to invent the future in
every field and the result is an
incredible explosion of innovation we
call the Renaissance
now communication technology races head
long into the future and soon people all
over the world sharing life's most
important moments faster than ever
before
yeah
by now we're all communicating from
anywhere honest and in 1969 from
somewhere else
I prob all the where violent to send a
man to the moon we had to invent a new
language spoken not my man
but my computers at first very large
very expensive computers but we see the
potential
what if everyone could have one of these
amazing machines in their own house
there's just one problem there is big as
a house
the solution comes in of all places a
garage in California young people with a
passion for shaping the future but the
power of the computer in everyone's
hands
together we form a super network that
glows with billions of interactions and
once again we stand on the brink of a
new renaissance after thirty thousand
years of time travel
here we are a truly global community
boys to shape the future of this our
spaceship earth
for the first time in history all of us
can have a say about the kind of world
we want to live in the choices we have
made for the past thirty thousand years
have been inventing the future one day
at a time and now it's your turn
yeah
you