Hey Colin
Hard to tell what happened when you tried creating a new version and it failed, so always make sure you have a good backup routine that works in case something unexpected happens. But normally however, what I write below should be perfectly safe to do:
OK so I thought - just delete one, but got a dire warning message about deleted Business Spaces being irrecoverable.
This sounds like the regular warning message you always get when removing an old version.
Have you made any changes at all in any of these versions? If not, it is safe to remove both of them without losing any job/data.
Why remove them, one might ask? If I got the error message when trying to create a New version I would not rely on that version at all. I would rather create a new minor that doesn't throw an error.
When they are both removed, just right click the last published version (black text: CURRENT) and click "New Minor Version".
When you put it in testing mode, all of your test data will remain because it is stored in the test database (if the correct radio button is ticked, "Use existing data").