Booster's fuel contamination problem and it's possible solutions

10/28/24:

4:17 PM:

This one is really puzzling. You have to balance it off the fact that the booster was caught successfully on the first attempt. The use of carbon dioxide and water in order to pressurize the cryogenic booster tank makes no sense. Therefore, something here just cannot be. How can you do something that makes no sense at all, and then be successful? There's something wrong somewhere, but I cannot put my finger on it. So, I won't try any further. The results speak for themselves.



8:45 AM:

Whose idea was it to use carbon dioxide and water in order to pressurize the tank? At cryogenic temperatures, these two substances are going to freeze up, as they're bound to do at nowhere near cryogenic temps. Somebody didn't have their thinking caps on, methinks. Much hardware had to be installed just to keep the ice out of the engine intakes. Sheesh.

10/27/24:

Recovering the booster is turning out to be a much more difficult problem than it seemed. Fortunately, a solution appears to have been found in the new engine rolling out soon. Before that new engine was developed, a stop gap solution had to be implemented.