Too many people's mental model of engineering seems to be drawn from Green Lantern comics: If a gadget cannot do a certain thing, it must be because its builder

Too many people's mental model of engineering seems to be drawn from Green Lantern comics: If a gadget cannot do a certain thing, it must be because its builders don't have enough will to succeed. They need to want it more! Another, related, effect of most people not being exposed to engineering is a belief that engineers don't make gadgets do certain things simply because it hasn't ever occurred to them (i.e. ideas are everything, and implementation is probably trivial in comparison).