[inferiorhuman]

That sort of irrational behavior makes me wonder if das muskrat has his paws in this. If he was willing to drop $44 billion on Twitter, this is pocket change by comparison. And he's been desperately trying to get that guy to stop tracking his jet.

  The data is still freely available and will be distributed via another channel.

The ADS-B transmissions are still freely available but the value is in the aggregate product. In the case of ADS-B Exchange that aggregate takes a ton of work from volunteers who (if the comments here are any indication) are inclined to stop volunteering. An ADS-B receiver has a range of dozens, maybe hundreds of miles. Without that network of volunteers Joe Schmo in Santa Cruz will have no way of tuning in to that freely observable transponder in Austin.

[nocoiner]

There’s most definitely a coordination problem to be solve to recreate that network, and I don’t mean to understate the difficulty of that at all, but I’m wondering if a (reconstituted) network of a small-ish number of volunteers could scale up to, say, 80% of the current ADSB Exchange coverage surprisingly quickly?

My feeder, which cost maybe $100 all-in (pi + sdr + antenna; though the pi was much cheaper then than it is now) has full coverage of two major airports. Normal range is 200 miles (obviously dependent on altitude) and sometimes picks up plans ~250 miles away, I assume depending on relatively rare atmospheric conditions.

With reasonably optimal distribution of what, a few hundred receivers, my mental math is suggesting you could cover a majority of the continental U.S. landmass and a large majority of its population and air traffic?

Again, not to understand the magnitude of this. But if someone’s objective is generally to redistribute public data, or track Gulfstreams on their way to Omaha during times of financial upheaval, or poke a finger in the eye of the private jet lobby, but not to create a 99% comprehensive, monetizable data source for a sale to private equity - maybe it’s not crazy infeasible?

[inferiorhuman]

It's not impossible or even infeasible really, but it is unlikely and it is a lot of effort. How many open source software projects even have 100 people working on them full time?

I hope something fills the shoes left by ADS-B Exchange, but I won't hold my breath. I already had the Pi so I probably spent around $40 getting the SDR + cheapo antenna. I got bored with it quickly though as there's already decent coverage of the Bay Area – and the SDR has since been repurposed to monitor my fridge.

[wkat4242]

I agree that 20M isn't much for Musk but I really doubt he'd hide his involvement behind another company like this.. It's not his style, he'd trumpet it all over Twitter and claim it as a win for free speech or something :P

Considering the new owner is a jet charter they do probably have a similar motive, I just don't think Elon is behind it here.