Dr Charles Pellerin knows all about failures and disasters on a colossal scale. As a former top Nasa scientist and official, the physicist still remembers the day in 1986 he walked into his office and was told the space shuttle Challenger had exploded, killing all seven astronauts inside. Later, he was put in charge of the Hubble space telescope, whose early malfunctions - though subsequently repaired - proved to be one of the most costly mistakes in the history of science.
Out of the ashes of the Challenger and the Hubble failure, Pellerin revamped the Nasa management that helped restore the reputation of the world's greatest space agency. Today, as a consultant and academic, he is spreading the message that technology without proper management could be a direct road to hell. Among his clients is China's space programme, which is aiming to put a man on the moon and beyond.
As the man responsible for the launch of the Hubble telescope in 1990, Pellerin admitted 'being in charge of the biggest screw-up in science'. The Hubble project at the time of the launch cost US$2 billion, and it would take another US$20 million to fix it.
As Pellerin explains it, Challenger and Hubble both suffered from deviant organisational cultures. He mounted a mission to fix the telescope, with help from some 20 scientists against a bureaucracy that had written the project off.
He recalls the day that Challenger launched.
'That morning I drove into the parking lot, I saw people I worked with standing by the elevator, they were waiting for me.