09 // Development Roadmap
SEVEN MILESTONES FROM GROUND TO FLIGHT
THE DISTANCE FROM HERE TO THE BUBBLE
| MILESTONE | STATUS | OBJECTIVE |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | In progress | Ground soliton lock. 0.5 m radius bubble at 2 T in the Vapor Vacuum centrifuge facility. Sustained for 45 minutes. First-attempt lock: 73%. Target: 95%. |
| 2 | 12–18 months | Dual-frequency control. 1 m bubble at 5 T. Simultaneous 500 kHz + THz control. 2 hours continuous against induced perturbations. |
| 3 | 18–24 months | Pilot interface qualification. Conventional cockpit against full control system. 30-minute sessions without manual override. |
| 4 | 24–36 months | SF-1 integration. Full power, 4-hour continuous operation. EMC qualification: fusion pulses must not interfere with bubble control. |
| 5 | 36–48 months | First untethered hover. Full 4 m bubble, SF-1 power, all systems live. 10 minutes. First untethered flight on a self-generated field. |
| 6 | 48–72 months | Flight envelope expansion. Subsonic → supersonic → hypersonic. Trans-medium qualification follows. |
| 7 | 72–96 months | Operational certification. All regimes, all tiers. The regulatory timeline is the most uncertain element. |
The engineering gap between Milestone 1 and Milestone 5 is the distance between a 0.5 m bubble at 2 Tesla and a 4 m bubble at 20 Tesla. The physics scales. The instability growth rates slow at larger scale (longer Alfvén transit times). The control challenge shifts from raw speed to sustained reliability. The power requirement scales as the cube of the radius. The program is gated by SF-1 maturation at Milestone 4 and by regulatory engagement at Milestone 7. Everything between is engineering. The program requires Highfield Magnetics superconducting coils at every milestone.
FIRST FLIGHT — UNTETHERED HOVER DEMONSTRATION