Reset windows, or try clicking it a couple of times. Occasionally, for me at least, windows show up incorrectly when opened, and clicking it in the taskbar twice bring it up again. If it's stuck offscreen there's something you can do under one of the main window's options.
I dumped all my starting research into production and survey sensors, with a little in engines. I lost one geo survey ship one jump out to anti-missile missiles fired from a contact at 10K Km. I lost another to missiles fired from a planet. In a different system. Both combats took ten seconds. (Two jumpships into each system, one for grav surveys, one for geosurveys) I neglected to put real sensors on any of these in order to squeeze more survey equipment and maintenance spaces in alongside the jump drive. I have no warships as of yet, though Sol seems to have absurdly plentiful resources this time around, so I can probably slowly work up to an invasion.
The interface isn't really "bad" as in "doesn't do a satisfactory job once you understand it", it's just "bad" as in "it lacks basic fucking niceties that shouldn't need to be asked for. Like not requiring a fuckhuge resolution, or being able to fucking scroll through the spreadsheets with the fucking mousewheel/zoom in and out of the maps with said fucking mousewheel. Or being able to bring up the task force window for a task group by double clicking it on the system map or something. That sort of thing." Granted it's written in a hilariously antiquated language, one that was antiquated long before the project started, I think. Like, a decade before. But still... >:|