Commercial doesn't imply profitable.

The real mystery is why the diameter was chosen instead of the more logical ratio of the circumference to the radius. Euclid would not approve.

Any unmanned aircraft is a drone - even the Cox 049 powered plane on a string.

Not all skydiving is done from a plane. There are plenty of folks who jump off of perfectly good bridges and cliffs and film the result.

He was flying his drone in order to get pictures/video to post on Youtube. It is commercial use.

So, wait... that option was for those who think that choosing a shiny object will make them stand out from the crowd? Maybe I'm an Apple fanbois and don't even know it? Aaaurghh! I feel unclean.

There are some things that money cannot buy.

Yeah, that was kind of thin, wasn't it? Still, continuing the search has got to be worth something somewhere along the line to the folks with the purse-strings, otherwise they would have stopped.

You can't crack a cabin door open at altitude. The cabin is pressurized relative to the outside air, and the cabin door is plug fit, meaning it plugs the hole like a stopper in a basin. You have to pull the door into the plane, against the pressure, in order to open it. A mere thousand feet up, the pressure on the door is something like 1500 pounds.

On the other hand, the search is providing information about the ocean floor, weather patterns, currents, etc. as well as providing on-the-job training and practice for oceanographers, search and rescue teams, and the like. So, it's not like there is no return on the investment being made.

No. Effect (meaning to induce or bring about) is correct here. Affect (meaning to alter or influence) is wrong. Terrorism induces political change. It causes change to happen. Terrorism can only affect or alter political change if that political change was already in the works.

Until we find wreckage, we have no idea what happened to the plane, nor how to prevent it from happening again.

Um... It may affect their right to work on strong encryption software?

Also, what's preventing them from becoming Americans further down the road if they chose?

We can only hope that that includes the US. :-)