Originally Posted by wphamilton

You're just fooling with me aren't you? The forward path is certainly parallel to the flat ground. The vertical path is towards the Earth's center. The resultant velocity - magnitude and direction - is the vector sum of both instantaneous velocities. That's the physical reality. If one insists on thinking about an instantaneous velocity, at some angle to the ground, then you're going to multiply that momentum by sine and cosine to get the resultant orthogonal forces and it turns out exactly the same.

And no, when I said (too much already) about spreading the force experienced from friction over time, and when I noted how to include the friction term in the initial impact, I am not talking about "friction free universe".

This is unproductive. Sorry folks. I honestly didn't realize that folks would not understand this, let alone argue about it.