Could a completely frictionless projectile "fireball" if it moved fast enough?

[PB666]

Just now, sevenperforce said:

Indeed. But the compression/expansion cycle can be made arbitrarily close to adiabatic by choosing a particularly optimized form factor, so it is still valid to consider conservative forces only. 

Sure, but the OP specified a frictionless object. 

Repeat again skin friction is do to the media the object is in not the object. Read the wiki's

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscosity#Dynamic_viscosity

Reynolds number = pressure(density)* object velocity*Length / viscosity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parasitic_drag#Skin_friction

Air has a viscosity of mu=0.00018.6  Pa*sec. IOW the OP should have said that the object had a zero crossectional area and was moving through as gas with no viscosity (a fictitious gas).
Note also on the page as velocity increases, the moment of heat on the boundary layer air increases with objects relative speed and the viscosity increases.

To restate, an object that has no form drag also had no cross sectional area, because its the reflections of the gas off the object that creates form drag, an object that has no skin drag has no length, because it the movement of gas along the length that creates skin friction. Therefore a frictionless object has no cross-sectional area and no length, which is to say an object with no volume. As I said originally.

Take the limit of a mass with a fixed density and using the most efficient form, the Sears-Haack shape, and reduce the mass to zero along the limit, as you will see drag-acceleration will go to infinity as mass goes to zero.

If you read the wiki pages there is nothing more to be said on the subject.

[sevenperforce]

15 minutes ago, PB666 said:

To restate, an object that has no form drag also had no cross sectional area, because its the reflections of the gas off the object that creates form drag, an object that has no skin drag has no length, because it the movement of gas along the length that creates skin friction. Therefore a frictionless object has no cross-sectional area and no length, which is to say an object with no volume. As I said originally.

Take the limit of a mass with a fixed density and using the most efficient form, the Sears-Haack shape, and reduce the mass to zero along the limit, as you will see drag-acceleration will go to infinity as mass goes to zero.

An inner-tapered cylinder maintains gas reflection inside and converts those reflections into compression, which are then converted back into expansion after the narrowest point is passed.

Obviously, a truly frictionless object is impossible, but that doesn't mean we can't model one. Perhaps something approximating frictionless behavior could be achieved by certain types of boundary layers or bleeds or electromagnetic fields, and in such an instance modeling the object as frictionless would be desirable.