This is a really bad and superficial article. They try to dismiss the idea of a sonic boom as a product of the imagination of a crazy environmentalist. But the

This is a really bad and superficial article. They try to dismiss the idea of a sonic boom as a product of the imagination of a crazy environmentalist. But the sonic boom is a well documented and completely uncontroversial fact. Then they try to set up a strawman by implying that the main concern is architectural damage and therefore if there is no architectural damage everything would be ok. But there is still the concern of health and quality of life damage to humans. Imagine if you lived by a major airport and you had to hear a sonic boom every couple of minutes. Then the idea that modern materials and light-weighting would significantly reduce the sonic boom is rather unlikely. A passenger plane will have a limited benefit from lightweighting, because you cannot light-weight the cargo. You will probably get much quieter sonic booms if you have small business jet style planes, but it would still be there. Fighter planes are entirely too small and too expensive to be business jets and they still create quite a noticeable boom. There has been a lot of research on how to minimize booms. It has not really resulted in anything acceptable. But, hey, if someone makes a supersonic passenger plane with a sonic boom that is too quiet to cause any issues, sure we should change the law. But to change the law based on stary-eyed belief that the magic of lighweighting will make everything ok is just stupid.