Windows 8.1

I played a couple of characters with no problems after update. I selected a third character, selected a ship, changed some weapons, and on launch, an error window came up. I hit ok and was stuck with a "Launching" screen. I forced vo to close and opened it again, selected the same character, and was immediately presented with a window title "lua error", with a close button, and text as follows:

vo/vo_gameevent.lua:1255: attempt to index local 'shipobj' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
vo/vo_gameevent.lua:1255: in function 'func'
vo/vo_gameevent.lua:1851: in functioin <vo/vo_gameevent.lua:1844>

selecting the close button presents me with the "Entering Universe" vo style dialog, with the progress bar at about %70, and not moving. Selecting cancel returns me to the sign in screen. I can log into other characters, but if I try to log in this character, the error is repeated. character slot 4 is no longer a playable character. I believe the ship was a corvus hound. The ship is expendable.

Edit: I have fixed this character by typing /explode in the console.