I don’t think missions are individually billed for DSN time, rather DSN time is allocated according to NASA internal priorities. Which is a classic resourcing p

I don’t think missions are individually billed for DSN time, rather DSN time is allocated according to NASA internal priorities. Which is a classic resourcing problem in bureaucracies. That also explains the challenge for private investment. If none of the missions are budgeted to buy bandwidth, then you would have no customers for a private DSN service.