Five phases. Two decision gates. One target.
A dual-speed model governs the schedule. Organizationally decelerated: no global-treaty precondition — the regulatory track is national authorization extended by a coalition-of-the-willing instrument, plus unilateral full transparency to all nations. Technologically accelerated: AI is credited with 3–10× compression of design, verification, and autonomous swarm construction — and with nothing on the three incompressible floors: low-thrust transfer times, real-time ecological closure validation, and multi-year human physiology data.
Foundation
Program incorporation; first peer-reviewed publications; first competitive government concept award; Engine-1 commercial entry in orbital-debris recycling.
10-meter demonstration
Humanity's first controlled aggregation: two small bodies brought to contact at centimeters per second in lunar DRO, anchored, and instrumented. Megawatt-class electric-propulsion endurance; first commercial ore delivery; first reserve node stood up under a commercial name.
Contact mechanics match models · propulsion endurance ≥10⁴ hours · autonomous assembly passes its uncrewed subscale test. This gate prices the probability of 2076.
100-meter crewed prototype
Competitive down-select among spin-bag, hollowed-shell, and external-truss construction. First crew aboard ~2043 — a date reverse-engineered from the biological floor, because Gate 2 requires at least five years of crewed 1-g data. First lunar volatile-delivery contract; reserve expanded to three nodes under defense procurement.
Multi-year human data nominal · material closure ≥95%.
Kilometer-scale aggregation
Core body plus continuous feedstock at Sun–Earth L4/L5; spin-up to 1 g; staged pressurization.
Habitation and closure
Population ramp to 1,000; full multi-year ecological validation; legal status of the artificial body confirmed. Target: full operation of UB Station One in 2076.
Stated honestly: 2076 is an aggressive target whose probability is set at Decision Gate 1. The 10-meter controlled-aggregation demonstration is the critical path of the entire program, and advancing its start date is the highest-leverage action available in the 2020s. The floor sequence — aggregation demo mid-2030s, crewed 100-m prototype mid-2040s — is achievable under neutral assumptions.
The full treatment — regulatory track, gate criteria, and the dual-speed model — is in the white paper.