In the real world, since the first artificial satellite was launched in 1957, the history of human development of space has been more than 60 years, but why has so many years passed, but space weapons have not yet been born?
In fact, it is not accurate to say that there was no space weapon, because as early as the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, there were space weapons, and the Soviet Union also loaded it on the spacecraft and fired a shot, which is an R-23 modified space cannon. Any weapon is prepared for war, so the background of the "Cold War" is closely related to the birth of this space cannon. The Cold War involved the competition of national strength in all aspects, from the economy to the military, and the space race was a very important part of it.
At the beginning of the Cold War, the Soviet Union was far ahead, and the first artificial satellite launched by humans in 1957 was built by the Soviet Union.
Since then, the Soviet Union has completed the first manned spaceflight, the first space out of the capsule and other space feats, but the good times are not long, with the decline of the Soviet Union's economic strength, the United States began to catch up with the latecomers, so there is the Apollo moon landing program that we are very familiar with. The Soviet Union knew that it could not achieve a manned landing on the moon in a short period of time, but it was not willing to lose in the space competition, so it began to find another way to build a human homeland in space, that is, the space station, so on April 19, 1971, the Salyut-1 space station successfully entered the earth's orbit, becoming the first space station in human history. With the space station, the Soviet Union was very proud, but soon they found that the space station did not seem to have any substantial deterrent to the United States.
Although the Salyut space station in Earth orbit looks mighty, the United States does not take it seriously, and it is really unpleasant to launch satellites or launch satellites, and it is really unpleasant to plan to land on the moon or plan to land on the moon.
It's like a man building a big villa in a village full of adobe houses, thinking that everyone was going to come to worship, but no one paid attention to it, and even dried beans in front of your house didn't greet you. In this context, the Soviet Union was very angry, so it decided to equip the space station with space weapons, and in this context, a modified R-23 space cannon was born, and the prototype of this space weapon was the R-23 cannon on the tu-22 high-speed aircraft. The R-23 cannon is a high-speed gun that fires 2600 rounds per minute, but was modified to reduce the number of bullets to 32.
Why reduce the number of bullets to 32? Because there are really not many bullets in space, these 32 are actually redundant.
How are bullets fired from the cannon? It relies on the kinetic energy generated by the combustion of the drugs inside the bullet, and the bullet will produce a reaction force of equal strength and opposite direction while flying forward, which we call recoil on Earth. Space is an almost vacuum environment, and the space station equipped with cannons does not have any support, so after a bullet is fired, the attitude of the space station will change greatly, the target will be shifted, and there is no need to launch a second round. Maybe you will say: "The cannon is not a sniper rifle, what is the aim so accurate, blindly fighting, a thousand rounds, always can be blindfolded a few shots", this is not OK.
The speed of the bullet is quite fast, but it is not fast enough to get rid of the gravitational constraints of the earth, and if the bullet shot out of the low Earth orbit of the space station does not hit the target, then it will run in the earth orbit at a speed close to the time of launch, and when it turns back, it may hit itself.
Even if you turn a circle back and don't hit, then there is a second, third, fourth lap, sooner or later hit yourself, even if you don't hit yourself, you will hit other satellites or spacecraft, so shooting in space, you must ensure that you hit the target, don't shoot if you can't, otherwise no one can foresee the consequences. In addition, firing a shot will cause a large change in the attitude of the space station, and if the continuous shooting, the space station must be out of control and turned, and then it will not need bullets to hit, and it will be finished.
It's also important to say that shooting a gun generates heat.
There is air on Earth, so heat can be dissipated by heat conduction and thermal convection, but space is almost vacuum, and heat can only be slowly dissipated by thermal radiation, which alone determines that it is impossible to shoot continuously in space. For these reasons, the space cannon did not need too many bullets, so it was reduced to 32, and eventually the Soviet Union equipped the modified space cannon on the obsidian military space station disguised as the Salyut and fired a shot, successfully hitting a target satellite. Although the test launch was successful, the process was not easy, because the cannon was fixed on the space station, and it could not move itself, so it could only rely on adjusting the position and attitude of the space station to achieve aiming, so the aiming speed was very touching, the target satellite could be, and the actual battle was basically useless.