My angle on the whole expedition:
I sit sometimes for 3+ hours in one go at my office desk, that feels traumatic to me, but the safety net I have is I can go get a tea and have a shit, wander around then sod off for lunch, hang around chatting to girls, you know the sort of thing.
I don’t think I could sit in a pod for 3 hours, on my own looking out as the sky falls away, through the clouds, then up into nothingness with the only outcome being the fact that if I don’t like it I have to jump out, this, this alone scares the (tight) pants off me.
As for the diva, well nahh I don’t think he is, the year off was obviously planned in as he had other commitments and the delays in build brought about that window.
Changing the PM half way through the program was ill conceived but rightly justified by RedBull. That alone sends shivers down a/the team which are hard to reform again escalating costs and delays in build seemed the right thing to do for them.
As they said, building something new for this type of event was always going to cost.. RedBull stood by the project, could have been easy to pull out at any time.
Transfixed I was.
But I still can’t bring myself to buy a can of RB.