If you don't mind I'd like to piggy back, as I had virtually the same issue last night (also the 17th? what are the odds?).
I was playing, trying to switch from one ship to another, and neither method (pressing t or using the f-interaction menu) worked, so I decided to save and quit to main menu and load again. Game basically froze and became unresponsive, in fact my whole computer wouldn't work, not even the usual ctrl+alt+delete did anything, so after waiting a long time I was forced to just use the power button to restart the laptop. I'm guessing the improper quit corrupted something.
I don't really have any knowledge with coding, so trying to convert this galaxy into a dedicated server seems pretty daunting. I read somewhere about deleting some .ini files, but right now I'm trying the old uninstall+reinstall trick.