I think you're thinking about the problem the wrong way. There is a cost to postponing the launch, but compared to having their rocket blown up by lightning on

I think you're thinking about the problem the wrong way. There is a cost to postponing the launch, but compared to having their rocket blown up by lightning on launch, it's nothing. As far as I know, the budget for these launches already includes x number of retries - since scrubbing launches and retrying in another window is actually standard procedure - so they are not "loosing" as much money as you think. It's only if they exceed the # of retry attempts that they've budgeted for that a solution like yours becomes viable, and even then, you're not fighting against "the cost of getting things set up". You're fighting against the cost of having their rocket blown up on launch because of bad or unforseen weather events. That's why they scrub - not because the weather is too bad to fly - it's because there could be an unforseen event happening because an anvil cloud (which has lightning in it) - merges with another large storm formation at 10 nm - basically, it's insurance against the rocket blowing up. If you can insure your weather detection solution in the high hundreds of millions for a positive launch, then there would be a market for it. And to be successful, your product will need to cut that 3 min downwards, not upwards. So that mission control can have a better confidence of scrubbing a launch, say within 10-s of launch time vs 3 min. You get what I mean? Better weather detection allows mission control to delay longer until the best guess estimate of when to hit the STOP button, not so that they can plan ahead to put a launch at xyz date/time because a weather prediction system says so.