EAC wrote:

It should be noted that the R-7 family (used for Sputnik, Vostok,
Voskhod, Soyuz, Progress, Molniya, and so on) has been in service for
around more that four decades, and it has been used for many things,
both for manned applications and unmanned applications.


In fact, we are coming up on the 50th anniversary of the start of actual
construction work on the R-7 "Semyorka"; the program for its development
was approved way back in February of 1953.

Pat