Unlike their colleages, active cosmonauts do not spend all their time at Star City, but remain working in production sites, laboratories, etc., keeping a mailbox at Star City. Delays, therefore, are considerably longer than known with Western astronauts. However, they have decreased remarkably compared to experiences in the 60s and 70s. Reply times of more than a year are exceptional as they are with western space participants.

Retired cosmonauts particularly still take their time since requests are forwarded to them and then return to Star City where handling still takes some time.

Whereas flown Russian cosmonauts may send Official Mail, unflown cosmonauts and non-Russian cosmonauts (except for active NASA or European guest cosmonauts) have to pay for their postage. It is appropriate and polite to enclose 1 US-Dollar, 12 Roubles, or mint Russian stamps to cover return postage. It might be wise to also enclose a large size addressed envelope if return of your items might require this.

In Russia and the C.I.S. unflown cosmonauts are usually not regarded as cosmonauts, and it has been a habit amongst cosmonauts not to send out signatures before the space flight effectively has taken place.