I thought the type of life support that was put on a ship determined how far it could go from the ships home planet. When building a ship, basic life support shows as .3 sectors, so I assumed that a ship could only go that far. However, I've sent ships out 3-4 sectors regardless of life support. So what exactly is life support supposed to do (what kind of game effect)?

I built a mining starbase on a resouce just about half a sector away from Earth. A couple of turns later, I looked at Earth's "detail" screen in the "starbase bonus" area (upper right hand corner) and did not see any bonus noted as coming from that starbase. Am I missing something?