The other day, I was testing my "mining pulser" weapon (area effect/mining) to see how balanced it was; http://i.imgur.com/X2dmx.jpg (This is meant to be the level III version, and isn't even meant to deal damage to ships) I also found out that nothing says "love" like "massive space pirate genocide...

I have had this happen to me too. I think it happens if you try and dock with something, but are killed before you reach it, or are killed while on a dockscreen. Once you respawn, no dockscreens work, and you have to restart transcendence.exe to get them working.