When the e-mail dropped into Charlie Silverton’s inbox he must have known instantly that it was the kind of message entrepreneurs dream of, the kind that can change lives.

A follow-up phone call confirmed it: Silverton could be rich. Very rich. The company, which builds drone spy planes for NASA and the US military, wanted to buy Silverton’s young business.

“One thing I do know is that once you start painting things green and selling them to the army you are talking in millions,” he says. But Charlie Silverton rebuffed the offer, from a company whose name has been withheld, without even knowing how much was on the table after discussing the deal with his 20 staff. He is the man who turned NASA down.

As with all major decisions, Silverton and Anderson took the issue to the staff. The company is run on a consensus basis and the owners are just two votes among 20.

Another major influence on the decision, says Silverton, was ethics. “We wanted to do something good. It is quite difficult as an engineer to look back at the end of your career and say ‘everything I did was good’.”

Bravo to Charlie and his associates. For making a choice based on their own standards. The right to do so — whether it concerns business, politics, life style or whatever — appears to be alive and well.