"How are lasers better than bullets? Lasers still take a ton of energy and that energy dissipates pretty quickly (inverse square law). On the other hand, bullets will travel indefinitely and hit their target with the same energy that they left the muzzle with, since there's no air resistance for the bullet to deal with. In the real world micro-meteorites can be quite devastating and NASA worries a fair bit about them. You can't get them to the speed of light but you could fire them at velocities much faster than a ship can match (as the ship is much more massive)." - Eric P