The originator of the Tropical islands project was Malaysian-based entrepreneur Colin Au, the former CEO of Star Cruises, a leading cruise line in the Asian-Pacific region. The structure is 360 metres in length, 210 metres wide and 107 metres high. By example, it is tall enough to contain the Statue of Liberty standing upright, the Eiffel Tower on its side or to envelope the entire Louisiana Superdome with room to spare. It was not to be and when financial problems set in, the massive CargoLifter-Airship hangar in Brand, an hour's drive from Berlin, stood for many months without a tenant - after all, not many companies have a need for the world's largest self-supporting building.Ĭonstructed with the sole purpose of building the massive Carglifter airships, the building is truly gargantuan with five million cubic metres of interior space. Seen by some as a flying crane, had it reached market, it would certainly have been handy in the recent Tsunami relief operation - with a payload of 160 metric tons, and a range of up to 10,000 km, just one of the CargoLifter CL 160 could have transported enough food to feed 25,000 people for a fortnight. The CargoLifter AG was in the process of building a zeppelin-like semi-rigid airship capable of carrying enormous loads directly from their point of manufacture to the point of destination, without ever touching the ground. The failure of an ambitious bulk air carrier project in Germany in 2003 has become the catalyst for one of the most interesting tourist destinations on the planet. That's when I had the idea for Tropical Islands." A former cruise line operator, Au reversed the principle of cruising: Instead of taking people to the tropics, he took the tropics to where they were most needed. "Not many people do not have enough time or money to go on extensive holiday trips abroad. He decided to build a tropical paradise with X Y and Z, and create a holiday destination for the locals who wanted relief from the cold and grey weather in Germany. The Italians would provide the sister ship to the Italia called the Norge, and build the hangar and airship masts necessary for what would become known as the Amundsen-Ellsworth-Nobile Expedition.FebruWhere do you find a tenant when the world's largest self-supporting building suddenly becomes vacant? You think outside the square! That's what Malaysian businessman Colin Au did. On 1 September 1925, Benito Mussolini, the leader of Fascist Italy, and Amundsen representing the Norwegian Aero Club, signed a contract. The story of the hangar actually began three years before Nobile’s arrival at Kings Bay. It was one of the largest buildings of its kind in the world and certainly the largest building in the Arctic.” The systems they needed in place to build it. “Many things were impressive about the hangar,” adds Olav Gynnild, senior curator at the Norwegian Aviation Museum. “The construction of this hangar was an incredible undertaking for the 1920s.” “Building in the Arctic is challenging even today,” says Hannele Zubeck, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Alaska Anchorage and a specialist in Arctic construction. The aviator thinks there is still an area about half the size of Canada where few – if any –humans have ever set foot.Įighty years later, engineers agree with Amundsen’s assessment. The airship Italia, under the command of its designer Arctic aviator and engineer Colonel Umberto Nobile, has just arrived at Kings Bay having completed the final leg of its flight from Rome. Nobile’s mission is to explore the last big blank space on the globe: the Arctic. The Norwegian archipelago, formerly known as Spitsbergen, is about halfway between Norway and the North Pole. The location is Kings Bay in the north of Svalbard, a group of islands known as the gateway to the North Pole. This enormous Chinese blimp could replace satellites.The university shaping aviation’s future.The airship that could unlock the Amazon.It has no roof, but two sides that look like the giant wooden trestle bridges that you see in Westerns movies. In front of the dirigible is a very large, strange-looking construction. A multitude of tiny stick-like figures await their orders below. In front of it is the sea, full of floating chunks of ice.Ĭables hang down from the sides of the craft like the antenna of an insect. Their glaciers glisten in the spring sunshine. The machine itself is dwarfed by the snow-covered mountains that surround it on three sides. On the sides of the airship are stamped in black capital letters, one word: ITALIA. In the photo, a huge silver airship floats over a large snowfield.
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