Sci-fi Writers Guild Forum

I've designed the standard weapon batteries of the Challenger 'verse to be variable, (mostly because it fits my style, I'd rather have one set of batteries that can do multiple things then three sets of guns that can only do one thing) Recoil is never a problem because lasers are basically giant overpowered flashlights on steroids and photons have so little mass they can't barely even measure it.
They have a point defense setting allowing for instantaneous destruction of enemy fighters and bombers (EM shield takes care of most all of the missiles) as well as a more powerful (but slower recharge) ship to ship combat mode. cooling these weapons is no problem since it's in space and the heat just leaks away naturally.
GUASS cannons also have variable loads (4 currently) All Purpose, Turboflak, Grappler and Impacter. Guass weapons have little to no recoil at all since they have no moving parts except for the loading mechanism, and use magnets to fire. Cooling is more problematic with the guass guns since the magnets require cowlings to keep them protected from damage. There's generally a heat sink system built into the rear of the turret housing.

Plasma weapons are being fazed out because of an interesting problem that occurs in battle, any plasma bursts that miss will slow down due to their releasing of gas and eventually hit something near by the firing location. (within 100,000 KM) The majority of friendly fire (still have no clue why they call it that! It's not friendly at all!) is from plasma cannons that missed because big ships will crash into them. And plasma causes a lot of collateral damage, it'll stick to the hull of a ship and continue to "burn" for quite some time melting the hull plating. a couple of cruisers were badly damage by their own guns when a couple of firing crews got trigger happy at close range. (hello reprimand)

I recently read an interesting report on human survivability in space, they probably wouldn't explosively decompress. I'm not saying you'd be fine but the human body is held together by electromagnetism as well as the strong nuclear force (and our AT fields) :P and if a pressure differential was enough to cause spontaneous explosions then people in the early airplanes would've been raining from the skies in little pieces, since they didn't have pressurized cockpits. Roasting or freezing is always possible, depending on what's close to you. Any air in your lungs would be pulled out by the loss of pressure however and that wouldn't be pleasant. The report stated the the average human would last about 20 to 30 seconds before biting it. That'd be a really painful, nasty 30 seconds trying breath but finding nothing to suck in while bits of your lungs float by..... Yah. If you could get a person back into a hospitable environment in time they might (and I use that word generously) Might survive.... Probably not.