{"id":363834,"date":"2026-08-05T23:30:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T23:30:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/363834\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T23:30:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T23:30:46","slug":"tampa-company-reflects-on-groundbreaking-of-spaceship-earth-45-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/363834\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa company reflects on groundbreaking of Spaceship Earth 45 years later"},"content":{"rendered":"

TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Every year, millions of families go to EPCOT Center, but how many families can say they helped build it?<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a photograph of my son, my dad, myself,\u201d said Bob Clark, looking at photos from the construction of Spaceship Earth, inside his office at Tampa Steel Erecting Company.<\/p>\n

WATCH: Tampa company reflects on groundbreaking of Spaceship Earth 45 years later<\/p>\n

Tampa company reflects on groundbreaking of Spaceship Earth 45 years later<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the time we did Spaceship Earth, it was an unusual job, and there were very few people bidding on it,\u201d said Clark.<\/p>\n

So, during the summer of 1981, Tampa Steel Erecting Company, a staple in the community since Bob\u2019s dad founded it in 1945, got to work.<\/p>\n

Over the next year, they spent 100,000 man-hours and used 2,000 tons of steel to create the iconic 180-foot-high dome.<\/p>\n

\u201cSpaceship Earth is an honest-to-God geodesic dome,\u201d said Clark. \u201cWhat that means is the ball you see floating there is floating in space, it is only attached to the structure about a third of the way up in about 32 places.\u201d<\/p>\n

Engineering News Record Magazine would later classify it as one of the 125 most significant structures ever built, right alongside the Statue of Liberty and Eifel Tower.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of my friends will send me a picture in front of it so then I will send them back a picture of me standing in front of the ball,\u201d said Clark.<\/p>\n

Clark, now 88, said the project he cares most about is always the one he\u2019s currently working on, but he says Spaceship Earth will always have a special place in his heart.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like peeing in my pants with a dark suit on, it gives me a warm feeling even though nobody notices,\u201d said Clark.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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Sarasota County teacher loses home after lightning strike starts a fire<\/p>\n

A Sarasota County teacher and her family lose nearly everything in a house fire. Firefighters said the fire started from a lightning strike.<\/p>\n

Sarasota County teacher loses home after lightning strike starts a fire<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 Every year, millions of families go to EPCOT Center, but how many families can say…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[87632,139513,2659,147869,276,18143,139511,135,5910,108336,3670,137,136],"class_list":["post-363834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-45-years","tag-bob-clark","tag-disney-world","tag-epcot-center","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-robert-boyd","tag-spaceship-earth","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-28","tag-tampa-bay-28-news","tag-tampa-bay-local-news","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}