The Coherence Number from Orbit: What CAL and MAIUS-1 Already Bound, What They Cannot Reach, and the Measurement That Would Price 𝒩

The corpus's bounce is conditional on one unmeasured number. With 𝒩 = n_f V_c — fermion density times spin-coherence volume at bounce conditions — the bounce exists if 𝒩 ≲ 1–10², stands at its published numbers if 𝒩 ≈ 1–2, and does not exist if the coherence length is any fixed physical length, which gives 𝒩 = 2.15×10³⁸. No real material, at any density, has a priced 𝒩. This paper asks what the best free-fall coherence record in existence — the Cold Atom Lab (CAL) on the International Space Station and the MAIUS-1 sounding-rocket interferometers — already implies for the 𝒩 programme, what it cannot reach, and what measurement would. The verdict is printed at full size. Read in the only dimensionless form that travels, 𝒩_lab = n ξ³, the orbital condensates are coherent over 10⁵–10⁸ particles: if that value could be transplanted to bounce conditions the gate would be shut, not open. It cannot be transplanted — the orbital systems are dilute bosons at nanokelvin, the bounce system is dense fermions 28 orders of magnitude denser — and the paper builds the bridge that would be needed, names the joint where it is still open, and specifies the measurement that closes it: a degenerate, spin-mixed Fermi gas in persistent microgravity, measuring the spin correlation length directly, across degeneracy and interaction, to ±10% in length (±30% in 𝒩), so that the correlation physics — not a decree — is what gets evaluated at bounce density. Design only. No hardware is proposed for fabrication, and the fabrication gate stands.