Cargolifter AG was a German company founded in 1996 to offer logistical services through point-to point transport of heavy and outsized loads. This service was based on the development of a

heavy lift In transportation, heavy lift refers to the handling and installation of heavy items which are indivisible, and of weights generally accepted to be over 100 tons and of widths/heights of more than 100 meters. These oversized items are transported ...

airship An airship or dirigible balloon is a type of aerostat or lighter-than-air aircraft that can navigate through the air under its own power. Aerostats gain their lift from a lifting gas that is less dense than the surrounding air. In early ...

, the CL160, a vessel designed to carry a payload. The airship was never built and the company went bankrupt in July 2002. Today, shareholder-founded ''CL CargoLifter GmbH & Co. KG'' company seeks to continue selling the lighter-than-air technology. CargoLifter and Russia’s Aerosmena are among those developing huge airships that can lift up to 600 tons of freight while hovering above the ground or sea. Cargolifter AG was founded by a group of influential engineers and scientists in 1996, and its main goal was to promote airships and develop technologies for their use as a lifting mechanism for transporting heavy and bulky goods to hard-to-reach places. According to this idea, 1 m3 of

helium Helium (from el, ἥλιος, helios, lit=sun) is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. ...

is able to lift 1 kg of cargo, which means that when giving a large cylinder a special shape, it has a great chance to lift loads weighing hundreds of tons.

History

Company

Cargolifter AG was created on 1 September 1996 in

Wiesbaden Wiesbaden () is a city in central western Germany and the capital of the state of Hesse. , it had 290,955 inhabitants, plus approximately 21,000 United States citizens (mostly associated with the United States Army). The Wiesbaden urban area ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. A

public stock offering An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investment ...

took place in May 2000, and the resulting shareholder structure was characterized by a high proportion of small

investor An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future Return on capital, return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some specie ...

s, attracted by substantial press coverage of the new breakthrough

technologies Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, science, ...

being promised.

Hangar

The hangar for production and operation of the CL160 and engineering team facilities were built on the former

Soviet Air Force The Soviet Air Forces ( rus, Военно-воздушные силы, r=Voyenno-vozdushnyye sily, VVS; literally "Military Air Forces") were one of the air forces of the Soviet Union. The other was the Soviet Air Defence Forces. The Air Forces ...

base at

Brand-Briesen Airfield Brand-Briesen Airfield is a redeveloped military air base located at Briesen/Brand, part of Halbe in Dahme-Spreewald, Brandenburg, Germany, about south-southeast of Berlin. Since 2004, the former CargoLifter airship hangar has been converted by a ...

Brandenburg Brandenburg (; nds, Brannenborg; dsb, Bramborska ) is a states of Germany, state in the northeast of Germany bordering the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony, as well as the country of Poland. With an ar ...

, acquired to enable development and operations. The hangar ( long, wide and high), a technological marvel in itself, is a freestanding steel-dome "barrel-bowl" construction large enough to fit the

Eiffel Tower The Eiffel Tower ( ; french: links=yes, tour Eiffel ) is a wrought-iron lattice tower on the Champ de Mars in Paris, France. It is named after the engineer Gustave Eiffel, whose company designed and built the tower. Locally nicknamed "'' ...

on its side, and was featured on the

Modern Marvels ''Modern Marvels'' is an American worldwide television series that formerly aired on the History Channel and is currently shown on Story Television. The program focuses on how technologies affect and are used in modern society. It is History's f ...

episode "Hangers". The hangar was also equipped with a cutting table to manufacture the airship's

envelope An envelope is a common packaging item, usually made of thin, flat material. It is designed to contain a flat object, such as a letter or card. Traditional envelopes are made from sheets of paper cut to one of three shapes: a rhombus, a shor ...

. After the company went bankrupt, a tropical theme park was opened there.

Airship

The first CL 160 airship was never built, though a considerable amount of design and development work was undertaken. The technical complexity (something akin to designing an airliner with less vetted technology) along with limited funding (a fraction of the funding typically available for the development of new airliners), and short development timeline meant that program challenges were underestimated, making the project relatively risky. A small crewed prototype named 'Joey' was built in order to test project concepts on a reduced scale. Another aircraft, the "CL 75 Aircrane" transportation balloon prototype, of similar size (61 m in diameter) and height (87 m) to the CL 160, was built but destroyed in a storm in July 2002. Despite the setback, an agreement was reached with

Boeing The Boeing Company () is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, telecommunications equipment, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product ...

in 2002 for the joint study of a lighter-than-air stratospheric platform. The prototype, filled with 110,000 m³ of

, was taken out of the hangar for the first time in October 2001. It represented a new stage in full-scale experimental purposes. The loadframe of this unit was engineered by American company AdvanTek International LLC, on behalf of Cargolifter AG. The sale of one CL 75 Aircrane along with 25 options (at a unit price of US$10 million), was later planned to the

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

company Heavy Elevator Canada Inc., a deal with which CargoLifter AG was at least 20% involved. The contract never became effective.

Insolvency

On 7 June 2002 the company announced

insolvency In accounting, insolvency is the state of being unable to pay the debts, by a person or company ( debtor), at maturity; those in a state of insolvency are said to be ''insolvent''. There are two forms: cash-flow insolvency and balance-sheet i ...

, and liquidation proceedings began the following month. The fate of parts of the 300 million euros in shareholder funds from over 70,000 investors is still unclear. In June 2003, the company's facilities were sold off for less than 20% of the construction costs. The

airship hangar Airship hangars (also known as airship sheds) are large specialized buildings that are used for sheltering airships during construction, maintenance and storage. Rigid airships always needed to be based in airship hangars because weathering was a s ...

was converted to a 'tropical paradise'-themed indoor holiday resort called

Tropical Islands Tropical Islands Resort is a tropical water park located in the former Brand-Briesen Airfield in Halbe, a municipality in the district of Dahme-Spreewald in Brandenburg, Germany, 50 kilometres (31 mi) from the southern boundary of Berlin. I ...

, which opened in 2004. The Skyship airship, which had been purchased by Cargolifter for training and research purposes, was sold to Swiss Skycruise and used in

Athens Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital and largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh largest city in the European Union. Athens dominates ...

for flights connected with the

Olympic games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...

held there.

Continuation

Today, the ''CL CargoLifter GmbH & Co. KG'' company, founded by former Cargolifter AG shareholders, seeks to sell the lighter-than-air technology and is exploring the construction of smaller airships.

References

External links

The Cargo Lifter and the Tropical Island Resort

Website of CargoLifter KGaA
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cargolifter Defunct companies of Germany Brandenburg Aerospace companies of Germany