An interesting piece of Cold War history, at least I think so.  On October 10, 1984, the Space Shuttle Challenger was shot at with a laser from the Soviet Union.  This was used as a "warning shot" response to the United States "American Strategic Defense Initiative" and the military use of the space shuttle.

Although the laser was not intended to do any damage (and it didn't), it did cause a few onboard malfunctions and a few problems for the 7 astronaut crew on Challenger.  This event lead to a diplomatic protest.

I always thought that was an interesting event.  The laser fired at Challenger and the crew of STS-41-G is the only "attack" (for lack of a better word) on a spacecraft in history.

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the russians killed a few of their own satellites in a practice battle some years back.

Maybe now you can understand a little of what I was getting at in that long thread in the General Discussion forum.

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It's not a commonly known thing, infact I'll bet it didn't even make much of an impact in the news at the time.  Its basically something that only "space nerds" like myself would know about.   

I'm sure it could kill someone.  It was designed for anti-satelite warefare.  The belief was that if you got into a war with someone (typical cold war USA vs. USSR) that it would be useful to destroy their orbital communications and survalience network.  So, this laser was developed for that purpose and tested on a couple od Russian satelites.  It probably could have damaged the shuttle so it couldn't land if they had really wanted to (perhaps causing results simular to the Columbia breakup).

I know that the shot fired at the shuttle was a low intensity shot, kind of like a warning shot accross the bow of a ship.  There really isn't that much information about it, its kind if a forgotten event.  If you want to look into it yourself and see what you can find (I've only looked into it a little myself), it was the "Terra-3" Soviet laser that was fired during the "STS-41-G" space shuttle mission.

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those "lasers" use the far infrared spectrum and should therefore correctly be named "masers" (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation).

they propably wouldn't kill a man or a mechanical structure, but would play havoc with electronics.
the idea behind this is to wreck a satellite, not to blow it up.
this isn't star trek.

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Can you "blow" someting up in space anyways? The only effect I could imagine was a minor explosion of oxygen tanks.

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No, actually it's "Star Wars"   

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Is this a first?