Cargolifter AG
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 airship, the CL160, a 550,000 m3 vessel designed to carry a 160-tonne payload. The airship was never built and the company went bankrupt in 2002. Today the shareholder-founded CL CargoLifter GmbH & Co. KG company seeks to continue selling the lighter-than-air technology.
Cargolifter AG was created on 1 September 1996 in Wiesbaden, Germany. A public stock offering took place in May 2000, and the resulting shareholder structure was characterized by a high proportion of small investors, attracted by substantial press coverage of the new breakthrough technologies being promised.
The hangar for production and operation of the CL160 and engineering team facilities were built on the former Soviet Air Force base at Brand-Briesen Airfield, acquired to enable development and operations. The hangar (360 m long, 220 m wide and 106 m high), a technological marvel in itself, is a freestanding steel-dome "barrel-bowl" construction large enough to fit the Eiffel Tower on its side. The hangar was also equipped with a 180 m cutting table to manufacture the airship's envelope. After the company bankrupted, a tropical theme park was opened there.
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.
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