Anyone around early in the game's official release (I forget what version) remembers the dev's blunder when they "fixed" sensors by making the mass to range ratio the same for all tech levels (making anything beyond the first sensor useless)
Well Life Support is still that way, the mass to +range ratio is the same for all tech levels making any module beyond what you start with useless (unless you want to waste research points and increase the cost of your ships without changing any other stat). The only benefit of sinking research points in life support is the optimizations and the flat +1 range, which is rarely worth it.
I'm sure other people have noticed this and just don't really care about ship range enough to post anything. After all it does take a back seat to sensors and engines (which were similarly broken the same time as sensors). But it would be nice to see the devs care and have it fixed.
The End!