The oldest space launcher family in the world extra large scale R-7 11A511model of the first Soyuz Rocket 11A511.

Hand-painted aluminum and plastic model around 45 inches tall on the base diameter 10”, Samara, circa 2000-2001. Rare model and in a good condition.

A highly detailed model of the most recognizable and frequently used of the Russian rockets, made by Samara, the factory that produces the actual Soyuz rockets. 

This model made for Samara Space Museum and Exhibition Center exhibition for presentation purposes, as the model is a small copy of the Soyuz launch vehicle monument at the Samara Space Museum and Exhibition Center, which is located in Samara on Lenin Avenue, on Kozlov Square near the Rossiyskaya metro station in honour of the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's flight into space and the R-7 11A511 (Soyuz) rocket, manufactured in Samara since 1958 at the TsSKB-Progress enterprise.

The Samara Space Museum with a permanent exhibition and temporary exhibitions is located in the same complex as the rocket monument.

The monument itself is a real R-7 rocket, holding up a structure and a metal building. The height of the rocket together with the building is 68 meters, weight is 20 tons. The holding structure weighs 53 tons. 

The installed copy of the rocket was manufactured in 1984 by the Kuibyshev Progress plant as a sample for training combat crews at the Plesetsk cosmodrome. In 1999, the rocket, which had already exhausted its resource, was presented to the RCC TsSKB-Progress in honour of the 40th anniversary of the enterprise, which converted it into a model, all equipment was removed from the rocket and reinforced with bolts, of which about 13 thousand were used for the tanks alone. 

In addition, the rocket was repainted white, and part of the fairing of the spacecraft was repainted orange. The original color of the rocket tanks is grey , the rocket looks white during launch due to the frost covering the liquid oxygen tanks. 

The complex of the monument and the museum building represents a single architectural solution, which has become one of the most successful in the city in recent years (project by architects V.N. Chicherin, A.F. Temnikov, V.I. Zhukov).

The opening of the monument took place at 11 a.m. on October 1, 2001. The Governor of the Samara Region Titov, the General Designer of TsSKB-Progress D. I. Kozlov, representatives of Rosaviakosmos, and the Baikonur and Plesetsk testing grounds were invited to the ceremony.

On July 7, 2007, the "Alley of Love" was laid out near the monument.

The official opening of the "Space Samara" Museum took place on April 12, 2007. And already in the first year of its operation, the museum became the winner of the competition of the Department of Tourism Development "Tourism Brand of the Samara Region".

On February 24, 2010, the square in front of the monument was named after D. I. Kozlov, the legendary General Designer of TsSKB-Progress, to whom a monument was unveiled in the same square in 2019.

This was the fifth monument to the R-7 launch vehicle. Previous monuments and memorials to the R-7 launch vehicle were erected:

in Moscow at VDNKh in 1969 (a full-size model made for display at the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget in 1967 was used);

in the Moscow region city of Korolev at the entrance to the city on the Yaroslavl highway.

in Kaluga on the territory of the K. E. Tsiolkovsky State Museum of the History of Cosmonautics in 1973;

in the city of Leninsk (now Baikonur) in 1981.

The Soyuz (GRAU index 11A511) was a Soviet expendable carrier rocket designed in the 1960s. It was commissioned to launch Soyuz spacecraft as part of the Soviet human spaceflight program, first with 8 uncrewed test flights, followed by the first 19 crewed launches. The original Soyuz also propelled four test flights of the improved Soyuz 7K-T capsule between 1972 and 1974. In total it flew 30 successful missions over 10 years and suffered two failures.

The Soyuz 11A511 type, a member of the R-7 family of rockets, first flew in 1966 and was an attempt to standardize the R-7 family and get rid of the variety of models that existed up to that point.