Yes, it's a bug. Noted in 0.42 Beta 1, and evidently not yet fixed. (IIRC, it wasn't even enabled in 0.41.)
Abuse it as much as you like until Beta 2.x
Use it to speed up your ability to investigate new bugs deeper into the game, e.g. test whether ship defenses work. Beta 2 is now a bug hunt, and it's a target-rich environment.