6亿5,000万美金，到底是怎样的价值？

大约是六架波音737的价钱，又或者是七架F-35隐形战斗机——

至于逐梦者太空飞机（Dream Chaser），6亿5,000万美金只刚刚好够造一架。

逐梦者太空飞机由内华达山脉公司（Sierra Nevada Corporation）及美国航空航天局（National Aeronautics and Space Administration；NASA）开发，用以乘载太空人探索宇宙。

投身太空竞赛的低调女富豪

内华达山脉公司，100%由女企业家埃伦·厄兹曼（Eren Ozmen）及丈夫法提赫·厄兹曼（Fatih Ozmen）拥有。厄兹曼夫妻二人都是亿万富翁，各拥有13亿美金左右资产。

如同很多超级富豪一样，厄兹曼夫妻投身太空竞赛，与闻名天下的SpaceX伊隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）、维珍银河（Virgin Galactic）理查德·布兰森（Richard Branson）等人争一日之长短。

埃伦一直很低调，别说中国读者不认识她，连很多美国人都不知道她是谁，甚至至今仍有很多人把内华达山脉公司当成加洲的内华达山脉精酿啤酒公司（Sierra Nevada Brewing Company ），让内华达山脉公司一度出产写有「我们不是那所精酿啤酒公司」的杯垫。

埃伦到底有什么魅力，能让NASA另眼相看，把数以亿美金计的项目交给她负责呢？

1 ·.逐梦者太空飞机——从失败中浴火重生   

逐梦者太空飞机并不是一帆风顺的。

2013年10月，逐梦者太空飞机首次自由飞行便生意外，它从位于12,500呎高空的直升机上掉下来，这架由NASA投资3亿5,000万美金、内华达山脉公司投资3亿美金的太空飞机，被发现其起落架出现故障。

一年后，NASA把价值数十亿美金的合约交到波音和SpaceX手上，而非内华达山脉公司。

原本的逐梦者太空飞机，现在成为了非常昂贵的大堂装饰，放在内华达山脉公司的一个基地。然而，这个6亿5,000万美金的失败，并没有打沉厄兹曼夫妻的航天梦想。只花了数月，厄兹曼夫妻重整旗鼓，竞投了NASA的另一份合约，负责补给国际太空站物资。

这次厄兹曼夫妻胜利了。

内华达山脉公司与它的竞争对手Orbital ATK 和SpaceX，一同得到了价值140亿美金的合约。这艘尚待建造的无人货运太空飞机，同样叫作逐梦者太空飞机。

「我们投身太空探索，因为我们有动力和创新，我们看到了一个机会——也需要——让美国继续在这重要的前线发挥领导作用。」埃伦，这位于福布斯年度美国白手兴家女性榜中位列19的企业家如是说。

2 ·. 埃伦·厄兹曼：初来美国穷得什么工作都要做

厄兹曼夫妻是土耳其裔的，1980年代移民到美国念研究所。埃伦知道，如果她想在美国工作，她必须在学校获得高分。

那时，她在校园里打了几份兼职工作，在一家面包店出售自制果仁蜜饼，并在当时尚未被她收购的内华达山脉公司担任夜间清洁员。

其后，埃伦就职成为某公司的财务报告经理，但好景不常，公司被人收购，她也给解雇了。埃伦之后加入了法提赫工作的内华达山脉公司。

3 ·. 收购公司 打开事业新天地  

1994年，厄兹曼夫妻以低于500万美金收购了他们工作的内华达山脉公司，由埃伦占51%股份，法提赫占49%。

从1998年开始，他们陆续购买了19家航空航天和国防公司。发展至今，内华达山脉公司成为了全美最大的由女性领导的政府承包商，员工达4,000人，遍布33个地区。

4 ·. NASA为何看重内华达山脉公司  

太空探索是内华达山脉公司的重大决策——同时伴随着重大危机，内华达山脉公司从未发射过太空飞机到宇宙，但它正在大手投资于逐梦者太空飞机，以克服它的失败经验和名声。

NASA为何给予埃伦和内华达山脉公司机会？

一、成功的「微小」经验

诚然，内华达山脉公司从未成功建造一架顺利运作的太空飞机，但世上几乎没有企业曾成功过，而内华达山脉公司已经成功地把很多零件，包括电池、铰链和滑环送上太空，成就多达450项任务。

二、体积和重复次数的重要性

逐梦者太空飞机的设计，其长度是一般太空飞机的四分一，它有望成为唯一能够在商业跑道上着陆然后再次飞行（最多可达15次）到太空站的太空飞机。

三、让科研成果安然无羔的科技与用心

逐梦者太空飞机能够轻柔地滑向地球，确保宝贵的科学货物，如蛋白质晶体，植物和老鼠，不会被折腾，并在再入时受到损害。

相对其他大部分公司，它们的胶囊返回地球总会狠狠地撞向海洋，内华达山脉公司的逐梦者太空飞机拥有优势。

5 ·. 美国与女企业家 

从1981年来到美国起，埃伦摇身一变，由清洁员蜕变成为亿万富翁。

「看看美国，看看女性在这里能有多大作为，再看看全球的其他地方。」埃伦以她浓厚的土耳其口音说。

完整英文原文如下：

Even in the bloated-budget world of aerospace, $650 million is a lot of money. It's approximately the price of six of Boeing's workhorse 737s or, for the more militarily inclined, about the cost of seven F-35 stealth fighter jets. It's also the amount of money NASA and the Sierra Nevada Corp. spent developing the Dream Chaser, a reusable spacecraft designed to take astronauts into orbit. Sierra Nevada, which is based in Sparks, Nevada, and 100% owned by Eren Ozmen and her husband, Fatih, put in $300 million; NASA ponied up the other $350 million. The Dream Chaser's first free flight was in October 2013 when it was dropped 12,500 feet from a helicopter. The landing gear malfunctioned, and the vehicle skidded off the runway upon landing. A year later, NASA passed on Sierra Nevada's space plane and awarded the multibillion-dollar contracts to Boeing and SpaceX.

The original Dream Chaser, which looks like a mini space shuttle with upturned wings, now serves as an extremely expensive lobby decoration for Sierra Nevada's outpost in Louisville, Colorado. But the nine-figure failure barely put a dent in the Ozmens' dream of joining the space race. Within months of the snub, the company bid on another NASA contract, to carry cargo, including food, water and science experiments, to and from the International Space Station. This time it won. Sierra Nevada and its competitors Orbital ATK and SpaceX will split a contract worth up to $14 billion. (The exact amount will depend on a number of factors, including successful missions.) The new unmanned cargo ship, which has yet to be built, will also be called Dream Chaser.

The Ozmens, who are worth $1.3 billion each, are part of a growing wave of the uber-rich who are racing into space, filling the void left by NASA when it abandoned the space shuttle in the wake of the 2003 Columbia disaster. Elon Musk's SpaceX and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic are the best-known ventures, but everyone from Larry Page (Planetary Resources) and Mark Cuban (Relativity Space) to Jeff Bezos (Blue Origin) and Paul Allen (Stratolaunch) is in the game. Most are passion projects, but the money is potentially good, too. Through 2017, NASA awarded $17.8 billion toward private space transport: $8.5 billion for crew and $9.3 billion for cargo.

"We're doing it because we have the drive and innovation, and we see an opportunity--and need--for the U.S. to continue its leadership role in this important frontier," says Eren Ozmen, 59, who ranks 19th on our annual list of America's richest self-made women.

Until now, few had heard of the Ozmens or Sierra Nevada. Often confused with the California beer company with the same name, the firm even printed coasters that say #notthebeercompany. The Ozmens are Turkish immigrants who came to America for graduate school in the early 1980s and acquired Sierra Nevada, the small defense company where they both worked, for less than $5 million in 1994, using their house as collateral. Eren got a 51% stake and Fatih 49%. Starting in 1998, they went on an acquisition binge financed with the cash flow from their military contracts, buying up 19 aerospace and defense firms. Today Sierra Nevada is the biggest female-owned government contractor in the country, with $1.6 billion in 2017 sales and nearly 4,000 employees across 33 locations. Eighty percent of its revenue comes from the U.S. government (mostly the Air Force), to which it sells its military planes, drones, anti-IED devices and navigation technology.

Space is a big departure for Sierra Nevada--and a big risk. The company has never sent an aircraft into space, and it is largely known for upgrading existing planes. But it is spending lavishly on the Dream Chaser and working hard to overcome its underdog reputation.

"Space is more than a business for us," says Fatih, 60. "When we were children, on the other side of the world, we watched the moon landing on a black-and-white TV. It gave us goose bumps. It was so inspirational." Eren, in her heavy Turkish accent, adds: "Look at the United States and what women can do here, compared to the rest of the world. That is why we feel we have a legacy to leave behind.”

There are plenty of reasons that NASA gave Sierra Nevada the nod. Sure, it had never built a functioning spacecraft, but few companies have, and Sierra Nevada has already sent lots of components--like batteries, hinges and slip rings--into space on more than 450 missions. Then there's Dream Chaser's design. A quarter of the length of the space shuttle, it promises to be the only spacecraft able to land on commercial runways and then fly again (up to 15 times in total) to the space station. And its ability to glide gently down to Earth ensures that precious scientific cargo, like protein crystals, plants and mice, won't get tossed around and compromised on reentry. That's an advantage Sierra Nevada has over most other companies, whose capsules return to Earth by slamming into the ocean. Today, the only way the U.S. can bring cargo back from space is via Musk's SpaceX Dragon. "Quite frankly, that is why NASA has us in this program, because we can transport the science and nobody else can," says John Roth, a vice president in the company's space division.

Sierra Nevada has acquired its way into space. In December 2008, in the throes of the financial crisis, Sierra Nevada plunked down $38 million for a space upstart out of San Diego called SpaceDev. The company had recently lost a huge NASA contract, its stock was trading for pennies and its founder, Jim Benson, a tech entrepreneur who became one of commercial spaceflight's earliest prophets, had just died of a brain tumor.

Sierra Nevada had its eyes on a vehicle from SpaceDev called the Dream Chaser. It had a long, storied past: In 1982, an Australian P-3 spy plane snapped photos of the Russians fishing a spacecraft out of the middle of the Indian Ocean. The Australians passed the images on to American intelligence. It turned out to be a BOR-4, a Soviet space plane in which the lift is created by the body rather than the wings, making it suitable for space travel. NASA created a copycat, the HL-20, and spent ten years testing it before pulling the plug.

Eleven months after the Columbia exploded, President George W. Bush announced that the space shuttle program would be shut down once the International Space Station was completed in 2010 (in fact, it took another year). In preparation NASA invited companies to help supply the station. By this point NASA's HL-20 was mostly forgotten and gathering dust in a warehouse in Langley, Virginia. SpaceDev nabbed the rights to it in 2006, hoping to finally get it into space.

Eren Ozmen puts their acquisition strategy in rather unusual terms. "Our guys go hunting, and they bring me this giant bear, which is not fully dead, and say, 'Now you do the skinning and clean it up.' "

But it was an expensive job, and later that year NASA declined to fund it. Enter Sierra Nevada Corp., which was always hunting for promising companies to buy. "The company had been very successful in defense but wanted to get into space and had a lot of cash," says Scott Tibbitts, who sold his space-hardware company, Starsys Research, to SpaceDev in 2006.

Soon the Ozmens were devoting an outsize amount of time and money to the Dream Chaser. "It was very clear the space side was like a favorite son," says one former employee.

Eren Ozmen grew up in Diyarbakir, Turkey, a bustling city on the banks of the Tigris River, where she was a voracious reader and serious student. Her parents, both nurses, valued education and encouraged their four girls to focus on schoolwork. As a student at Ankara University, she worked full time at a bank while studying journalism and public relations and spent her little free time studying English.

In 1980, as she was finishing her degree, she met Fatih Ozmen. A national cycling champion, he had just graduated from Ankara University with a degree in electrical engineering and planned to pursue his master's degree at the University of Nevada at Reno. In 1981, Eren also headed to America, enrolling in an English-language program at UC Berkeley. She reconnected with Fatih and, at his suggestion, applied to the M.B.A. program at UNR. After she arrived on campus, the two young Turks became best friends.

The pair soon struck a deal: Eren, a talented cook, would make Fatih homemade meals in exchange for some much-needed help in her statistics class. They shook hands and became roommates. They both insist they never even considered dating each other. "It was just like survival," says Eren.

More like survival of the fittest. Eren knew she had to get top grades if she wanted a job in America. She was also broke and holding down several part-time jobs on campus, selling homemade baklava at a bakery and working as a night janitor cleaning the building of a local company called Sierra Nevada Corp.

After graduating in 1985 with her M.B.A., Eren got a job as a financial reporting manager at a midsize sprinkler company in Carson City, Nevada, just south of Reno. She arrived to find that financial reports took weeks to generate by hand. She had used personal computers in school and knew that automating the process would cut the turnaround time down to a matter of hours. She asked her boss if they could buy a PC, but the expensive purchase was vetoed. So Eren took her first paycheck and bought an HP computer and brought it to work. She started producing financial reports in hours, as she had predicted, and was promoted on the spot.

In 1988, the sprinkler company was sold, and Eren was laid off. Fatih, who was now her husband, had been working at Sierra Nevada since 1981, first as an intern and later as an engineer, and told her they were still doing financial reports by hand. She brought in her PC and automated its systems.

Soon after starting, Ozmen was sitting at her desk late one night and discovered that Sierra Nevada was on the verge of going out of business. The little defense company, which primarily made systems to help planes land on aircraft carriers, had assumed that its general and administrative expenses were 10% of revenues, but she calculated that they were 30%. At that rate, the business couldn't keep operating for more than a few months. She marched to her boss' office to deliver the bad news. He didn't want to hear it, so she went straight to the owners. They were stymied. The bank wouldn't lend them any more money. At Eren's suggestion, the company stopped payroll for three months until the next contract kicked in. Employees had to borrow money to pay bills. "It was like the Titanic moment. We are waiting for this contract, but we didn't know if we were going to make it or not," says Eren.

Since arriving in America in 1981, Eren Ozmen has gone from janitor to billionaire co-owner of Sierra Nevada Corp. "Look at the U.S. and what women can do here, compared to the rest of the world.”

That contract eventually came through, but Sierra Nevada was still living contract to contract two years later, when Eren, who was eight and a half months pregnant with her first child, got a call. The government audit agency had looked at the company's books and declared the company bankrupt and therefore unfit for its latest contract. Eren got on the phone with the auditor (she remembers his name to this day) and told him he had made a math error. He soon responded that she was right and that he needed to brush up on his accounting skills but that the report was already out of his hands. At that point Eren went into labor. Less than a week later, she was back in the office with her newborn.

The company limped along until 1994, when the Ozmens borrowed against their home to buy Sierra Nevada. Eren was sick of working for an engineer-led company that was lurching from financial crisis to financial crisis and figured she and her husband could do a better job running the place.

It took five years for the company to stabilize, with Eren keeping a tight handle on costs. "I can tell you, it wasn't a free-spending, freewheeling company. Everything was looked at," recalls Tom Galligani, who worked at the company in the 1990s. Eren worked for a time as the company's CFO and today is its chairwoman and president. Fatih became CEO and focused on creating relationships with government agencies and developing new products. He also began looking for companies to acquire.

As the sun sinks over the Rockies, Eren sits by the window at Via Toscana, a white-tablecloth Italian restaurant outside Denver, sipping a glass of Merlot and explaining in rather unusual terms the couple's approach to buying companies. "Our guys go hunting, and they bring me this giant bear, which is not fully dead, and say, 'Now you do the skinning and clean it up,' " she says. Fatih, sitting beside her, joins in: "There's a lot of screaming. And blood.

Fatih and his team search for companies that have some sort of promising high-tech product. Then they go in for the kill. "Of the 19 [companies we've acquired], we've never bought a company that was for sale," he says.

"The first thing you do with the bear is to establish a trusting relationship," Eren says, while reminding it of the benefits. "Every company we bought is ten times bigger now." Over the years, Sierra Nevada has bought companies that do everything from unmanned-aerial-system technology to high-durability communications systems.

Its first acquisition was Advanced Countermeasure Systems, in 1998, which made equipment that helped protect soldiers from improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Revenues have since zoomed from $3 million a year to $60 million, Eren says. A company is especially attractive to Sierra Nevada if, like Advanced Countermeasure, it has so-called "sole-source" contracts with the military, meaning it is awarded contracts without a competitive bidding process, under the rationale that only that specific company's product can meet the government's requirements. Last year the majority of Sierra Nevada's $1.3 billion in government contracts were sole-source.

Sierra Nevada's biggest source of revenue is from aviation integration, which means folding new technologies into existing planes primarily at its dozen or so hangars in Centennial, Colorado. Often that entails stripping down commercial planes and turning them into jacked-up military ones, cutting holes to install weaponry, cameras, sensors, navigation gear and communications systems. "What we do is take someone else's airplane and make it better," says Taco Gilbert, one of the many retired generals on Sierra Nevada's payroll. For instance, it took the popular civilian PC-12 jet ("That a lot of doctors and lawyers fly around on," Gilbert says) and modified it so that Afghan special-ops-forces could pivot from surveilling the Taliban to conducting a medical evacuation in a matter of minutes. It sold the U.S. Customs & Border Protection a fleet of super-quiet planes that can track the movement of drug traffickers without detection. When wildfires were raging in California in 2017, Sierra Nevada aircraft, modified with heat sensors, thermal imaging and night vision, provided support.

But it's not just Sierra Nevada's responsiveness that sets it apart; it's also its prices. In their own version of the "80/20" rule, the company strives to provide 80% of the solution at 20% of the cost and time. In other words, "good enough" is better than perfect, especially if "good enough" is cheap and fast. To deliver, Sierra Nevada spends 20% of its revenue on internal R&D, coming up with creative ways to upgrade the military's aging aircraft for less.

"This allows them to punch above their weight class and leapfrog the large guys," says Peter Arment, an aerospace analyst at R.W. Baird.

"You can go to Boeing or Lockheed and take five or ten years and spend a lot of money," Eren says. "Or we can provide you with something right now."

On top of the $300 million it spent on the original Dream Chaser, Sierra Nevada has spent an additional $200 million so far on the cargo version and expects to invest $500 million more by the time it's ready for takeoff. To recoup its costs, Sierra Nevada is counting on things going smoothly. The company has already earned $500 million in milestone payments from NASA as it successfully completed design reviews as well as safety and test flights using the crewed Dream Chaser (which shares 80% of the same design and features) before it was retired. Much like when Eren was counting on that key government contract to cover payroll in 1989, Sierra Nevada is now waiting for the big payoff that will come when it sends the vehicle into space. Its launch date is set for September 2020, 11 months after rival Orbital ATK's Cygnus takes off in October 2019 and a month later than SpaceX's Dragon 2. If the Dream Chaser completes its six missions to the space station by 2024, Sierra Nevada will pocket an estimated $1.8 billion.

Eren isn't blind to the risk that things could go wrong. But brimming with an immigrant's sense of patriotism, she talks of the glory of helping the U.S. reestablish its leadership in space. She thinks Sierra Nevada and other private companies can help the government catch up on the cheap. "Looking at what are the things we can do to make space available," Eren says, "it's the commercial companies who are going to come up with those creative ideas and help the country catch up."