system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why can't manufacturers include a sturdy gps system inside of a plane's "black box"

Seems that every time a plane goes down there is this massive hunt to try and find the black box. If the box itself can survive the crash, I would think it'd be possible to design a small and sturdy gps tracker that could also survive. Do they already have this? If not, why not?
gpt
TV and the movies has lied to you about how GPS works.

All a GPS unit does is receive signals to tell it where it is.

By itself a GPS unit never tells anybody else where it is.

In order to find something's location you will need something that sends signals not receive ones.

If you put a GPS tracker on something or someone, it works by figuring out where it is and then sending that information to someplace else by cell-phone or by something.

A plane has a GPS unit built in and the information from it gets send to the blackbox. Once the plane is on the ground the data in the blackbox knows excatly where the plane is (or at least where it last was before the gps receiver stopped functioning.)

The blackbox knows where it is. That is not the problem. The problem is getting that info out to the people looking for it.

You could built a cellphone device into the balckbox to try and call home with its last known location, but what are the chances that the plane went down anywhere where you have cell phone reception?

Instead the balckbox will send out a radio signal that allow people to find it.