I suggest that you go back a few saves and,  in-game,  destroy the pirate ship (if you can find it);  then switch off auto-save and click on a few turns to see if the game still crashes.

Unfortunately, there's only one of my save games so far where there are pirate ships, but I'll try it.

I really hope I don't have to update, because Impulse thinks my registration key is either wrong or expired, and it being wrong makes no sense really since I've entered it previously, read that it was right, and Impulse even lists it, whereas if I type in a wrong key it won't list that. I'd probably have to purchase a new key to update it...