Looks like you had the 4th gen hub, so no need for that crazy foam.
The early gen models used cir-clips to hold the center of the blades apart and therefore create spoke tension.
Same principle in Lightweights and other modern all carbon wheels.
They just use more smaller blades to meet the UCI requirement for multi rider start races.
I love the logic of one photo taken when they first came out and a few cases of failure on a website. There were over 400,000 sets made. How many reports are there? You do the risk analysis!