Yeah, the constant restarting is definitely not helping this game, but a jam bug is a jam bug. Whatcha gonna do? Just bind that to a key like 'R', and you should be good to go.
The gold challenge seems a bit punishing as the ship is very hard to control going as fast as that star is spinning. I get that it's a challenge, but is kinda seems a bit too hard? Idk, maybe I just need to git gud lol
Also, when I went to the tutorial, I saw that left click was thrust and I ZOOMED past the rest of the tutorial! I had no idea how to slow down, and I missed all that information that you provided. I tried again, with that lesson in mind, and it went much better, but maybe having a warning about how fast you'll go or maybe just having a slower rev-up speed overall could help things?