This section includes the most storied and legendary names still in service... or to put it another way, the dinosaurs. The most historically important of these is Russia’s Soyuz, the rocket that started the space race and put America behind for a decade. Russia’s other old survivor is the Proton, a heavier-lift vehicle that they kept secret in its early years, and which you could almost describe as proof that midcentury brutalist architecture can fly. In America, our oldest survivor is the Atlas, a family of rockets which has evolved and modernized far more than the Soyuz has, no longer bearing any resemblance to its ancestor. Our other venerable family is the Delta, which is now retired but was active when its page was written, and which also evolved to bear no resemblance to its progenitor. And finally, China has its own legacy rocket family, the Long March series. We cover only Long March 1 through 4 here; the later ones are significantly different and of quite recent design, and have their own article in a later section.

Every rocket in this group has modern replacements in development, or in early use. This is progressing most quickly in China, where the new models are starting to pass the old ones in frequency of usage. It is least advanced in Russia, because of how badly it has bankrupted itself. In America, the Atlas and the Delta are both being replaced by a single rocket, the Vulcan, which at this writing has not yet progressed to flying on a frequent regular schedule.

Of course that early era produced dozens of other rockets from the little Scout to the mighty Apollo, some famous and some forgotten, but we aren’t concerned with those here. We are listing the survivors which remained active into the modern New Space era.