Wow, you’re on a mission!! 
I get excited about growing things indoors to shorten development time as well… my fallible thinking is that as long as the potted conditions are sufficiently similar to the desired eventual conditions, the benefits are likely to outweigh the drawbacks. It seems to my novice’s reasoning that this might be especially true when growing something that’s used to drastically different conditions from what you’ll be able to provide.
To your question about growing media, definitely check out the Starting mix thread if you haven’t already 