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ULA has a 100% success rate. http://www.space.com/30738-united-launch-alliance-100th-rock...

Why does spacex have occasional failures? Do they run their experiments with customers cargos?

Note: I know nothing of the space industry.

1. Both of the rockets ULA currently uses(Delta IV and Atlas V) are much, much older than the rocket that SpaceX is launching. These rockets are on their 4th and 5th iterations, so they've had time to work out basically everything and aren't really pushing the limits of what they can do. Early on, these rockets did not have a 100% success rate. 2. I wouldn't call these experiments. In the past, all experiments(such as the landing attempts) were conducted after the customer payload was delivered so it posed no threat to them. Recently, they started performing static fires with the payload already integrated to save a couple days between the static fire and the launch. I suspect that they will stop after this anomaly.

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