Firing at UFO's

I agree, except if the shuttle were in the same orbit as the satellite that fired whatever we're seeing there (only a higher altitude orbit). Then wouldn't you only see a straight line (possibly with a (very small depending on the distance we're talking about) change in apparent velocity)?

PS: Though there was a star wars proposal that would utilize atomic blasts that had been 'aimed' at ICBMs

Yes, it was called the "pumped X Ray laser".

THE concept for x-ray lasers goes back to the 1970s, when physicists realized that laser beams amplified with ions would have much higher energies than beams amplified using gases. Nuclear explosions were even envisioned as a power supply for these high-energy lasers. That vision became a reality at the time of the Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980s, when x-ray laser beams initiated by nuclear explosives were generated underground at the Nevada Test Site. Livermore's Novette, the precursor of the Nova laser, was used for the first laboratory demonstration of an x-ray laser in 1984.

www.llnl.gov...