Cargolifter AG

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Exterior view of hangar built for Cargolifter.

Interior (note the three people at the lower left)

The company Cargolifter AG was created on first of September, 1996 in Wiesbaden, Germany with the goal of offering a logistics service based on point-to point transport of heavy and outsized loads. This service was based on the development of a heavy lift airship, the CL160, of 550,000 m³ to carry an initially planned payload of 160 tonnes.^[1]

In May 2000, there was a public stock offering and the shareholder structure was characterized by a high proportion of small investors, attracted by substantial press coverage of the new breakthrough technologies being promised.

The planned large airship "CL 160" was never built, though there was a considerable amount of design and development work undertaken. The technical complexity (something akin to designing an airliner, but with less tested technology), limited funding (a fraction of the funding available for the development of a new airliner) and very short development timescale meant, with hindsight, the programme was somewhat underestimated and hence relatively risky.

A small manned prototype, named 'Joey', was built, in order to test concepts on a reduced scale. Also a prototype of a similar sized (61 m diameter) and height (87 m) transportation balloon "CL 75 Aircrane" was built but destroyed in a storm in July 2002. Despite this, in 2002, a contract with Boeing was agreed, for the joint study of a lighter-than-air stratospheric platform.^[2]

In addition, the hangar for production and operation of the CL160 and facilities for the engineering team were built on a disused military airfield, acquired to enable development and operations. The hangar (360 m long, 220 m wide and 106 m high) also was equipped with a 180 m cutting table for the envelope's manufacture.

[edit] Insolvency

On June 7, 2002 the company announced insolvency and proceedings began the following month. The whereabouts of some of the 300 million euros of shareholder funds, from over 70,000 investors, is still unclear.

The 61 m diameter prototype transportation balloon "CL 75 AirCrane", filled with 110,000 m³ of helium, was taken out of the hangar for the first time in October 2001. It was a new development for full scale experimental purposes. The loadframe of this unit was engineered by an American company (AdvanTek International, LLC) on behalf of Cargolifter. A "CL 75 Aircrane" as well as 25 options (at a unit price of 10 million U.S. dollars), was sold to the Canadian company Heavy Elevator Canada Inc., in which the CargoLifter AG was involved to at least 20 per cent. The contract never became effective.

In June 2003, the company's facilities - with the future airship hangar, a hall of technological marvel in itself being a freestanding steel-dome barrel-bowl construction large enough to fit the Eiffel Tower (lying down) - was sold off for less than 20% of the construction cost. The hangar was developed as a 'tropical paradise' themed vacation resort called Tropical Islands, 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 for flights connected with the Olympic games.