Great discussion. I now understand more about the objections to replacing a black box with satellite streaming data . The two major objections seem to be 1) a catastrophic event could bring external communications to an immediate end and 2) the high data density could make it impractical to link it all to a satellite.

As to the first objection, any catastrophe would be preceded by the cause of the catastrophe. This is what one would hope to capture. I'm not sure if that covers every possible case but I it could be of great value to have instant access to events just prior. As to the second objection, intelligent systems can make useful decisions about which data to transmit and about how long a burst of information should be sent.

Anything that can be done to reduce the time needed to locate passengers who are injured or trying to survive on the ocean or in difficult conditions deserves a look, in my opinon.