>Not. Often obvious simple solutions are overlooked.

I'm not sure I'd say "often" has something like what you offered up been overlooked by SpaceX. We're long, long past the early eras when everything was first getting figured out, and the timescales and costs are totally different. Talking of "obvious", painting something black in orbit has clear enormous thermal implications, and there are aspects of the system that seem necessarily reflective as well (solar panels, optical links and so on) and in turn mitigation requires cascading design decisions. These aren't platinum plated Apollo era programs either. Like, gut check here: do you see ANY space stations or satellites in space, at all, where they "just painted them black"? I don't think it's actually trivial at all.

Anyway main point is yes, it's recognized and yes, it's getting worked on (successfully!), and I hope that will ultimately help pave the road for any other future megaconstellation efforts by showing what's possible.

I've been designing things my entire professional life, and yes, engineers overlook the obvious all the time (me too!).

I always look for simpler ways, and often enough find them.