3. Different sponsors have kept it going through the years 

Epcot is known for its use of sponsorships, and Spaceship Earth has received support from a few different businesses. When Spaceship Earth opened on October 1st, 1982, it was sponsored by a big phone company conglomerate named Bell Systems. In 1984, though, Bell was broken into smaller companies. One of them was the familiar AT&T, which sponsored Spaceship Earth from 1984 to 2004. Since 2005, German engineering company Siemens has been the sponsor of Spaceship Earth.

4. Spaceship Earth has kept its iconic structural design

One aspect of Spaceship Earth that never really changed was the architecture for the attraction. Walt Disney Imagineering put a lot of effort into the original design of Spaceship Earth, and it stuck when a lot of other things about the Disney icon didn't. Ray Bradbury also helped design the original structure. That immediately added a respected pedigree to Disney’s attempts for something that truly seemed out of this world. Neo-futuristic architect Buckminster Fuller was another named contributor. He developed the structural mathematics for the geodesic dome and was the one to name the Disney icon Spaceship Earth. The Epcot icon was similar to the United States pavilion at the 1967 World Expo in Montreal also created by Fuller, but Spaceship Earth was unique because it was a complete sphere supported with three pairs of legs. Spaceship Earth is described geometrically as a pentads dodecahedron, with 60 triangles divided into 16 smaller triangles.

The only real modification to the Spaceship Earth structure was a fairly minor one that only lasted a few years. For the Millennium Celebration, a 25-story magic wand with Mickey Mouse’s hand holding it was added to Spaceship Earth in 2000. However, by 2007 this unpopular addition was removed for good. Other than that, it’s essentially stayed the structure it always has been, the Disney icon that looms large at Epcot.