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 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. As 1 cubic meter of helium has a buoyancy of roughly 1 kg, the size of a craft required to lift heavy loads is considerable. History Company 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. Hangar 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, Brandenburg, 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 on its side, and was featured on the Modern Marvels episode "Hangers". The hangar was also equipped with a cutting table to manufacture the airship's envelope. 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,