What kind of damage do sonic booms cause?

> Xenophile wrote
>
> "And
> let's face it, it's hard to turn a profit with a supersonic
airplane
> if it isn't *allowed* to go supersonic."
>
> I really wonder whether or not that is true. There's some really
long
> routes out there that are entirely or almost entirely over water,
such as
> * Los Angeles - Tokyo
> * Los Angeles - Sydney
> * San Francisco - Tokyo
> * San Francisco - Sydney
> * New York - Johannesburg
> * New York - London
> * New York - Paris
> * etc.
>
> If the supersonic were fast enough (e.g., over Mach 2), then it
would
> begin to make sense to have hub traffic from other destinations
(e.g.,
> subsonic on regulara 757 or something from Atlanta to San
Francisco) into
> the overseas air gateways (e.g., supersonic from San Francisco to
Tokyo).
> That wouldn't make sense if the craft were just barely supersonic,
because
> any shortening of over-the-water time would be negated by
connection time
> in San Francisco. So, the craft would have to go fast enough
over the
> water to make up for lost time in connections.
>
> If the craft were fast enough, then the situation might arise for
which it
> would be quicker to get from San Francisco to Tokyo on the
supersonic than
> it would be to go subsonic from San Francisco to New York.
Wouldn't
> that be a kicker? ! Such a capability might be a boost to the
Pacific
> Rim economies.
>
> Ron

An interesting scenario you portray. To expand on your scenario,
what affect do you think that floating airports, anchored offshore
would have on supersonic traffic destined for overseas ports. I
would think that flight paths would be more straightforward, going
to supersonic could happen more quickly after take-off, etc.

What would happen with hyper-sonic suborbital planes and sonic
booms? Could you have these sub-orbital shuttles taking off from any
airport and going supersonic at a high altitude and then hyper-
sonic, or would you want to restrict them to overseas flight paths
as well? In a nutsehll, my question is: if you are at a high
altitude would sonic booms there have large impact on the surface of
the Earth?

TangoMan