> When space shuttle Challenger broke up over Dallas, Texas

That was Columbia, not Challenger. Challenger exploded on launch from Cape Canaveral.

I imagine because it’s a lot harder to successfully sue the USAF.

If you heard USAF sonic booms, they were probably over 15 miles offshore, or 15 miles inside an Air Force training range. They were probably not directly over your house.

A crosscountry scheduled supersonic flight will have to overfly populated areas twice a day - booming all the way.

(Something that causes a lot of confusion - people often think a sonic boom is an instantaneous thing that happens when the plane breaks the sound barrier - it is not, it’s a continuous shockwave that travels with the aircraft while it is flying above Mach 1; anyone on the ground who the shockwave passes over along the flight path hears a sonic boom)

If you’ve ever heard thunder from lightning 15 miles away compared to thunder directly overhead, that might give you some framework for figuring out the difference.

It really depends on where the sounds were generated, in my experience. Off shore sonic booms are loud, but fairly tolerable by the time the sound makes it to the beach. But I once heard two fighters go supersonic directly overhead in eastern Washington (they were pretty high up, even so) and the booms sounded like someone tried to bash in the front of the house. Not something you'd tolerate with any regularity.

I remember growing up during the cold war in western Germany which was formally under the control of the allied forces. So they were allowed to go supersonic with the military jet aircraft and frequetly did so, even in rather populated areas (by German standards - in general, Germany is much denser populated than the US). It was a bit annoying but definitely survivable (here I still am).

I think it was a mistake for the US to ban supersonic flight outright and especially at all altitudes. I can't imagine a sonic boom being a huge problem, if you are 10 miles up or higher.