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"Pending regulatory approval" mean no, it's not launching then. It means they can technically have everything ready to go, but still need final approval from the FAA. Although saying "final" may mean they have a preliminary, and are just waiting for the final official permission. We shall...

The SLS program is Congressional Graft. That we actually got a (theoretically) functional rocket out of it is a miracle. At 4 billion each and vendors associated with it in every single state, plus stuff in Europe, it's doing exactly what it is designed to do. ...which is not launching...

Not with 10k feet. They apparently had a 5k foot square footprint one in the past for ground testing. This new round 10k tall one is replacing it.

...Musk's next major building project at Boca Chica: liquid oxygen generator.

Eh, it makes sense. You want to go US-to-US, since I bet SS/SH is ITAR'd to hell & back. But since this will be the first orbital-speed re-entry, you want plenty of room to mess up.

They've blown up more than the other two bidders have built combined... :p Also, they lost quite a few Falcon-9's getting the landing down, and the belly-flop is a whole new maneuver which apparently is a pain to get right (and won't be needed for the moon). Their track record is solid, and...

A good chunk of the blame goes to Congress, which refused to provide the funding NASA requested. Of course, Space-X's bid was just flat-out better than the others, as I understand it. More capable and cheaper. IIRC, Blue Origin was basically thrown out for not even meeting the requirements...

Asteroids are nature's way of asking "How's that space program coming, anyway?"

Crew-1 on their way to to the pad. "Thank you for flying Space-X" still gets me.

Well, we truly have entered a new age: "Thank you for flying SpaceX."

Longer. Perseverance is a mostly-duplicate of Curiosity, and as such is both much larger that Spirit and Opportunity and, critically, RTG-powered rather than solar, which helps a whole lot.