In the top-right of your screen, there is a button to teleport back to the ship. It's right above the Quests button.
Note that it will only be available while on the surface of the planet, outdoors. Going underground will make it vanish, like this:
Note that the definition of "underground" is a bit crude. All you need to have teleporting available is that:
- There is no background wall on the square your head is occupying
- You haven't gone too far down.
This means that, for example, in the following image, I am able to teleport:
Even though I'm underground, with ceilings and background everywhere, because I'm not too far down, and because I've punched out the one square of background where my head is, teleporting is possible.
Lastly, while you are onboard your ship, the same button will change to allow you to teleport back down to the surface at any time, without having to actually walk over to the teleporter. It's not much, but it's handy.
1.0 and later
If you are playing on the "casual" difficulty, you can use the button to beam up to your ship anytime, except when you are in dungeons. This means even on Outpost, where on older versions you were obligated to use the teleporters to get back to your ship. If you're playing on the "survival" or higher difficulties, the functionality is the same as described earlier.
Planets in different/later sectors can have different allocations of ore, as well as different Biomes not available in the Alpha sector.
Note that the ore distribution differences can be a double edged sword - if you are doing something that needs Iron (say, you downloaded a new mod that requires Iron for its crafting station) but your home planet is in Delta or X Sector, you're quite unlikely to find it in any reasonable quantities. You'll also be unable to build your planet on a Tentacle or Magma planet in Alpha sector, because they aren't present there.
The flipside to this, however, is that on lower-level planets (like in Alpha sector), you're at considerably less risk of murder, mutilation, and mayhem caused by the local wildlife. Even Impervium armor only goes so far on threat level 10 planets in Sector X, but it will basically invalidate the threat of enemies in Alpha Sector.
Best Answer
Upgrading your ship normally involves getting crew members from NPC settlements (a total of 2, 4, 6, 8, then 10) by completing small randomly generated quests for them, or by hiring penguin mercenaries after defeating Dreadwing.
Once upgraded, there is no difference between a ship that was upgraded with a fake license and a ship that was upgraded with a real license. You will not be locked out of side-quests, and can still gain crew members if you want to.
The main disadvantage to upgrading your ship with fake licenses is its cost. You'll need a total of 280,000 pixels to fully upgrade your ship. Also, if you buy the first few fake licenses then decide to go the normal route, you'll still have to get up to the number of crew members you'd need normally to unlock the next tier, so your previous licenses have gone to waste.
The advantage to upgrading your ship with fake licenses would be that you don't have to run around completing small quests for NPCs, although I've personally found this much easier than collecting 280,000 pixels.