[bigveech]

Just to put it in perspective: it costs $300–500 to produce a single atmospheric profile with current balloon infrastructure. The U.S. launches ~180 a day—that’s at least $54K daily. Not exactly “pennies.” :)

And the government already buys the helium, radiosondes, and ground systems from private vendors—so the money’s going to private industry anyway. It’s just inefficient.

With 50 of our systems doing 4 profiles a day (which is no where close to max scale), you get the same volume of data for way less. And on top of that, because we reach remote and oceanic areas that aren’t being measured today, the data is also more valuable!

Also, the data you’re referring to isn’t inherently public domain. It becomes public when the government buys it and redistributes it. That’s true whether they pay for the infrastructure themselves or buy the data directly from a company.

[huslage]

I'm glad you have come up with something more efficient. The problem has nothing to do with efficiency. You are welcome to make a government contract to sell them equipment or data as you wish.

My problem is with baseline services that have already been stopped that you claim to want to replace. This data feeds all of our weather models and should be done with existing infrastructure until congress changes things. The data must be freely available.

The fact is that the data is available for anyone anywhere and is a valuable resource for scientists everywhere. Your current goals might be laudable right now, but that is not going to be the case when you have to pay back an investor 100x in 5 years. You will do everything you can to lock that data up and make it as expensive as you can. You will have no choice.

[Daviey]

It largely depends if it is bought by a public service under a license that allows public release, surely?