wrote:
Jim, you don't have to do the physics for a 1 g roll. click on

stanford.edu/~sigman/one_g_roll.html for a really neat analysis.

Page down toward the end of sigman's article to see the actual flight
paths that it takes. It's a neat read.

Oh, for the nonbelievers in Newton and vector analysis and such (Mx
whatever comes to mind) don't bother.

OPPS, It's www.stanford.edu/~siegman/one_g_roll.html

Fascinating - thanks for finding that! Amusing to note that a physicist of
that caliber was motivated to explore the situation due to an older thread
on the same subject on the same Usenet newsgroup! I considered setting up
the same situation using Mathcad 2000 (it can generate animations, so I
think I could have set up appropriate parametric equations and created a 3D
movie). But I just don't have the time at the moment to do that.

At least I feel better that my physical intuition didn't fail me.

The nit pickers may (reasonably) argue that the trajectories don't yield
the "barrel roll" spiral they might insist on, but such is life. I should
have titled this thread "Myth: 1 G rolls are impossible," and dispensed
with the word "barrel."