What kind of damage do sonic booms cause?

I always thought the concept was cool so I bookmarked a few pages on
Floating airports. I checked the links and they're still good.

San Francisco Request for Proposal in 2000 and San Diego Artwork

http://www.floatinc.com/WhatItIs.html

Mega Float in Japan - Actual photos of the prototype - BIG

http://oceaneng.eng.hawaii.edu/~vlfs/picture_week/megafloatphaseII.JP
G

http://oceaneng.eng.hawaii.edu/~vlfs/picture_week/Mega0201.GIF

http://oceaneng.eng.hawaii.edu/~vlfs/picture_week/Mgphoto2.gif

TangoMan

> No doubt IF floating airports were available, THEN that would make
SST
> routes a bit simpler. But the enormous cost of such endeavors
would, I
> think, make it difficult to get any such floating airports built.
>
> I don't know the answer to your sonic boom questions.
>
> Ron
> *****I
>
> "victoriatangoman " > 12/06/2002 07:26 PM
>
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