Controlling ParticleSystem time manually

Is there any way to control the time of a ParticleSystem through code? Just exactly like you can do it in the editor scene view. I for the life of me can't find a way to mimic that behavior at runtime. Unfortunately I have a suspicion that unity hasn't exposed enough of it's API . This is the best I have come up with:

Code (csharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2.  
3. [RequireComponent(typeof(ParticleSystem))]
4. public class ParticleSystemSampler : MonoBehaviour
5. {
6.    public float playbackTime = 0f;
7.  
8.    void Awake()
9.    {
10.       particleSystem.randomSeed = 1;
11.    }
12.    void Update()
13.    {
14.       particleSystem.Simulate(playbackTime, true, true);
15.    }
16. }
17.  

It works great up until playbackTime surpasses the ParticleSystem's startLifetime variable. At that point playbackTime becomes ineffective.

 

@Kaspar Daugaard