Built by the San Diego Hall of Science in 1973, the then-“Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater” was a watershed design, diverging from traditional planetarium theater configuration in two important ways. Firstly, the dome was tilted at a 25º angle, rather than parallel to the floor, and secondly, the seats were arranged to face in the same direction, rather than concentrically around the theater center. These changes provided the entire audience with a common center of focus and a common orientation, opening up flexibility in creating more compelling, theatrical presentations.

In conjunction with this novel theater geometry, The Fleet approached IMAX Corporation to investigate the feasibility of presenting the company’s revolutionary large-format films in a domed theater. While the concept presented several serious technical challenges, the resulting fisheye projection system paved the way for dozens of IMAX Dome theaters around the world.

After several decades of highly successful operation, The Fleet’s dome theater was due for a major upgrade. The geodesic dome suffered from visible seam lines, which limited the immersive impact of the theater’s wraparound configuration. With upgrades to digital projection on the horizon, The Fleet approached Spitz for solutions to return its theater to the forefront of dome projection.

With seam visibility reduction as the paramount concern, The Fleet selected Spitz Inc., a Cosm company, to install a NanoSeam projection surface in the facility’s dome theater.

Because the original dome’s unusual geodesic configuration used many small triangular panels, creating many, many seams as a result, its supporting structure did not allow repurposing for the new NanoSeam dome. Instead, our team removed the existing dome and its structural skeleton and built a brand-new framework from the base up to support NanoSeam’s much larger, pre-curved, and trapezoidal panels.

Sound reinforcement was another major element of this upgrade. To support the additional weight of the new sound system’s much more powerful speakers, Spitz custom-fabricated mounting hardware, allowing the speakers to be mounted directly on the rear of the dome.