Russian Scientists Announce Six-Month Delay In Carving New Space Station
http://www.theonion.com/article/russian-scientists-announce-...
http://www.theonion.com/article/russian-scientists-announce-...
And if it is stupid and it works, than it is not stupid.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg14619738-300-space-od...
Exemplified by the tale about how america spent millions of dollars developing a pen that writes in space, while russians simply used pencils.
On it's surface you think, silly americans! Supposedly though, americans expressly rejected pencils, because graphite fragments could get caught in critical places (remember it's electrically conductive!)
So we are left with the very cheap, probably perfectly functional approach. And the extremely expensive, objectively most safe approach.
Which wraps up what I understand as a core difference between the two programs nicely.
Neither was I saying russians jerry-rigged everything. What it does seem, is they used more simplifying approaches to control costs & complexity (possibly at the cost of some amount of additional risk)
Not to mention how expensive this overly complex design was.
Even when the built a space plane (for political reasons) they had the good sense to make it unmanned (in the beginning) and to not put the main engines on the vehicle itself. The also design in a ground abort system.