>So, put another way, is it better for the government to continue going into debt to operate projects like this with potentially dubious returns

Yes. The government is not a business. It does not need to turn a profit. Government services are not products for the generation of profit.

This framing is off. Weather data isn’t a fucking mars habitat, it’s core infrastructure. Airplane travel, agriculture, emergency response, and private weather services all depend on it. If anything, handing it off to profit-driven firms creates more risk with things like black-box pricing, gaps in data coverage, or national security issues.

And, “dubious returns” ignores that some of the highest-leverage investments in history looked like this. Government-funded satellite weather programs, GPS, and early internet tech weren’t obviously profitable, but I'm so glad we wasted tax dollars on that.