Laser: Ellipsoid Particle Emitter start point moves

So I just did a laser tutorial. Here A couple of questions.

1)Everything is working fairly well but then I noticed that when I attached the ellipsoid particle emitter to my space ship, the particles appear randomly behind the start point. I set the min emitter range to 0.0001 or any number and it still appears behind. The position is not fixed at all so I can't even distance the emitter from the ship. How do I make it so the emit point does not fluctuate? I'm using ellipsoid particle emitter, particle animator, and particle renderer.

2) Is there an easy way to destroy particles after a certain distance? I understand that I can adjust the life time (energy) but I want them to die at distance x. Adjust the life changes the look quite a bit. I could set up an invisible plane and have it hit that I guess. Any suggestions?