Yes, IGU is intended to be played with lots of pausing.
The video is absolutely amazing. I believe I have learned some more on ballooner navigation from it, what happens exactly at what fan distance, how long it will take etc. The duration of certain maneuvers is important here; you always assign climbers while the ballooner has enough space above itself, and do difficult maneuvers while not having to assign.
When I played the level, each time I hit a wall with the balloon, I was shouting like a farmer who's dropped an anvil on his foot. I was on voice chat with geoo at that time, so he was cracking up all the time. The circus music was icing on that scene.
The level was even harder in the beginning, and it had several vertical passages that had a width of 16 pixels, like the steel passage in the beginning. I edited those out, I thought that the user had put his navigational skills to enough use by entering that very first passage. I still wouldn't have thought that the current version wasn't that hard for you. Great job!
-- Simon