1. Launch contracts for paying customers where mission success was defined as "unharmed payload to correct orbit".

2. Test/demo missions with mass simulator instead of payload where mission success was defined as "unharmed payload to correct orbit" (two missions: Falcon 1 Flight 4 [0] and Falcon 9 Flight 1 [1]).

3. Rocket landing development flights with Grasshopper where mission success was defined as advancing the ability to land the booster.

SpaceX did R&D on all flights (for example they unsuccessfully tried parachute recovery), but for all flights of Falcon 1 and Falcon 9 (not Grasshopper), they always stated that mission success is to get the customer's payload unharmed to the correct orbit, or to demonstrate the ability to get the customer's payload unharmed to the correct orbit. If they defined mission success as anything else, a potential customer might think SpaceX would sacrifice the payload to advance SpaceX's own goals (like recoverability R&D), and this customer would not fly with SpaceX.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratsat

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Spacecraft_Qualificatio...