Just in...
Bernd Kröplin
Career
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Founding of CargoLifter
Founding of TAO-Technologies
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Cargolifter AG
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.
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,... 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...
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.
Looks like Kroplin and Sanswire could be a pefect match!
source jm.com
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