As the world fractally unfolds, this idea — that there are obvious things that have already been done and nonobvious things that only very smart people can figure out – is going to stop making sense on the face of it.
We are all very smart. But the universe is also very vast. We do not have all — not nearly all — of even the basic, bronze-age technologies that an alternate human civilization could have developed.
Of course there are simple tricks left involving photosensitive semiconductors and modern optical engineering, is my point.