Hey Rodger,
I've had the same problem with the same software.
Here's what I read and tried that did not help in my situation, but maybe it will help on your system:
- booting in 32-bit mode open (Get Info on Aperture and select Booting in 32-bit)
- deleting Aperture serialization file
- starting Aperture with CMD-Option-click and trying all three rebuild options
- re-installing the appliaction and the recent updates
Here is what made the problem go away temporarily:
turning off AirPort allowed the application to open
however, turning AirPort on AFTER Aperture opened made it crash again within minutes
At last this is what stopped Aperture from crashing upon loading for me:
deleting the Preferences file .com.apple.Aperture.plist file from ~/Library/Preferences
Note, however, that after I did that last step that made MY crashes stop, I now have a smaller but more complicated crahsing issue with Aperture - trying to authenticate via the Facebook plugin is causing Aperture to constantly crash (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3119025). It doesn't impact any other aspect of Aperture - it works totally fine when I don't try to upload any photos to facebook.
Hope this helps,
Aleksey