Here's a GREAT example of engineer-think. This is the kind of thinking that can drive some people batty, because it requires thinking about things that aren't happening. This has to do with the Kepler Telescope:
...the team knew that [a component failure] meant they were dealing with a potentially mission-threatening problem. "When the first reaction wheel failed, a few of us here and a few people at Ball Aerospace (who built Kepler) already started in the back of our minds kind of thinking ‘What if we lose another reaction wheel?’ You don't want to just throw away a relatively good, expensive telescope that can still do great science."
