For me under windows. Reopening doesn't seem to matter. Upon further investigation clearing the vessel cache seems to clear it.... which is odd.

We'll need to run into this again and have the output_log.txt in order to get an idea why this happens. I have not had this issue just yet.

Pre-emptively closing, I've never had the tracking station go gray, apart from when you start typing in the chat box - And the chat lock has always worked.

If we run into this one again, feel free to reopen it :)

It's probably related to input locks (alt+F12 -> show input locks) playing up, but I haven't come across yet.