You know, I'm something of a scientist myself...
With a background in software engineering, from the outside looking in, it does seem there is a challenge in the effort involved whilst maintaining both production versions, ie Horizons and Odyssey. When I looked at buying the game a few months back, I was a bit confused about which version to go with so I went with the latest.
As others have suggested, perhaps having a sandbox 'canary' version with a small set of star systems to test in for willing beta testers (incentivized by either in-game rewards or ARX). Then maintain only one production version going forward. Appreciate that there is a bit of a difficulty now as Horizons is the production one on Consoles. Perhaps make it clear that Horizons is the 'stable' version and Odyssey the beta.
My focus was on gathering materials with my little cargo scoop at the time of the update, something I simply cannot do now, so essentially I have to shelve this very immersive and enjoyable game until the issue is resolved. I can almost sense the steam rising off of the FDev keyboards in trying to resolve this issue, which was somehow missed during testing, as we speak.
Overall, I can only imagine the spaghetti code that any long standing software application can get itself into, so good look FDevs, I am rooting for you.
o7