![]() ![]() Von Gablenz said he made enormous strides by building the hangar and the prototypes, carrying out tests and signing up component suppliers. He knew from the beginning that the company would need more money before its airships were ready for business, he said, but he assumed that the markets would provide that money if he kept showing progress. Cargolifter shares jumped from 13 euros ($11.98), to more than 25 euros, within months.īut with the end of bull-market euphoria, Cargolifter's stock plunged along with countless other new companies, disrupting Mr. The idea of a modern zeppelin was easy and appealing to describe. Its gleaming hangar is a photographer's dream. The company benefited from constant media attention. But fascination with technology and entrepreneurship took hold here as well, and Cargolifter raised nearly $60 million more in a May 2000 public stock offering. It was a huge achievement in persuasion, especially in a country as habitually risk averse as Germany. He got land and more than $30 million in cash assistance from the German state of Brandenburg to build the hangar. Von Gablenz started Cargolifter in 1996 and raised more than $150 million privately. ![]() A former logistics executive and professor, who worked out his basic ideas on a sabbatical in North Carolina, Mr. Von Gablenz, meanwhile, has run through money faster than he hoped. Still, in its annual report last year, it noted that ''combining an airship with a crane constitutes an enormous technical challenge'' and that it would not be known until 2004 or later if the airships would be viable. The company has built a working scale model of the 160-ton-capacity airship and a full-size prototype of the 75-ton balloon, which is almost 70 yards across. ''This is something that would take hours.''Ĭargolifter executives say extensive studies have confirmed their concept. ''This isn't something that would happen in a few minutes,'' Mr. Then there is the problem of keeping a 100-ton piece of delicate engineering equipment from swinging and drifting as it dangles from the airship during unloading. But that assumes 160 tons of water are available, which may not be the case in the Siberian tundra or the Sahara. But when it comes time to lower and then release the oil rig or power turbine, engineers had to figure out how to keep the airship from shooting skyward the moment it released the enormous weight.Ĭargolifter designed ballast tanks that can be pumped with up to 160 tons of water as the unloading progresses. ''The problem is when you come back down.''Īn immense helium balloon can indeed hoist up gigantic payloads. ''It is easy to get this up in the air,'' said Peter Klaus, a professor of business logistics at the University of Erlangen-Nurenburg who has followed Cargolifter closely. Von Gablenz or his investors ever understood. Transportation experts say that in hindsight the concept was much harder to make workable than Mr. Anyone could understand ''the power of zero gravity.'' The difference was that this vision seemed concrete, logical and elegantly simple. Here, too, was an entrepreneur who was a master at selling. Here, too, was a company that went public on a vision and a technology. ''But we have made many new advances with the technology, and we know there is even more potential than we first thought.Ĭargolifter's story is a piquant fillip to the dashed dreams of the dot-com bust. ![]() ''People only ask me about the burn rate, about the money, about the time we need,'' Mr. His backup idea - a giant balloon that can lift 75 tons - needs another $50 million or so. His flagship flying machine, the 160-ton-capacity self-propelled blimp, needs another $300 million and is now on ice. ![]()
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