My first two attempts crashed on that screen as well. I then turned mods off and a game started just fine. We must have a mod that is now out of date to the program....
Do you have anything that changes map generation? StarSystemDefs.xml, for one, needs to have the Torian and Acrean star systems added to it (they can just be copied over from the version in the base game).
I personally would load your mods one by one to see which one is causing the problem and then check the files in the problematic mods to see if you can track down the problem.
A pain, I know. But as someone who regularly runs over a half-a-dozen mods (plus four or five more XMLs the Example Mod folder), it's a pain I've gotten very accustomed to. 
