I think it's worth having the discussion of having a permanent locator on aircraft that can't be disabled, remotely-triggered hot mikes, and longer CVRs. But I downvoted you for falling into the "if we can send a man to the moon, why can't we ____" argument trap, which is more or less the straw man.
> just cannot be this difficult ... easily and cheaply
Ever get a feature request from someone who, in a single sentence, describes months or quarters of development time and introduces all kinds of risks and dependencies, but thinks it can be done by next Tuesday?
Ever get a feature request from someone who, in a single sentence, describes months or quarters of development time and introduces all kinds of risks and dependencies, but thinks it can be done by next Tuesday?
I have, but I don't think that's relevant here. This isn't a "next Tuesday" issue. Planes have been flying over oceans for decades, and these issues have been contemplated and examined by allegedly bright people for at least that long. Yet, somehow, here we are in 2014 searching for a jet with 230 people aboard and are clueless as to where it is or how it "vanished".
I can assure you that whatever happened, it didn't vanish, and that those people likely suffered horrible, violent deaths. It is frustrating that we wouldn't apply modern technology to learn about and potentially prevent such tragedies. Even if seeing what happened in real-time couldn't have stopped this incident, knowing what happened could prevent similar incidents in the future.
> just cannot be this difficult ... easily and cheaply
Ever get a feature request from someone who, in a single sentence, describes months or quarters of development time and introduces all kinds of risks and dependencies, but thinks it can be done by next Tuesday?