federalregister.govSmall Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; McDonnell Douglas Aerospace Delta II Vehicles at Vandenberg Air Force Base, CA
On the Channel Islands, the sonic boom signature is expected to be indistinguishable from ambient noise levels. Over water, the sonic boom is significantly less than that estimated to cause a temporary threshold shift injury and NMFS is unaware of any scientific evidence indicating that a behavioral response results from a single, low-frequency sonic boom.
There is the affect of a sonic boom from a missile launched on land on the coast of CA and they assess that the freakin' seals right under it will barely hear it if at all. No one thirty miles away would hear anything.
I stood five miles from the launch pad of the final Challenger launch and didn't hear a sonic boom. I didn't hear any sound from it exploding either. At the time it was 73 seconds into its flight at an altitude of 48,000 ft (9.1 miles), speed - Mach 1.92 and approx. 5 miles downrange. Why was there no sonic boom audible at the causeway? Why wasn't that humongous explosion audible there?
good posts!