anyway you can download this to a usb to create a recovery "disk" if you ever need to reinstall your OS
Lion Recovery Disk Assistant
You certainly can, but you don't need to. I want to make sure everyone understands this, because there seems to be a lot of misconception about how Lion's recovery options work....
Yes, you can make a disc and that disc will make Lion installable on a clean hard drive that doesn't have the recovery partition.
But if you have an existing Lion install and want to do a clean install, your system drive will have a hidden recovery partition. Even if you erase the disk, the partition is still there.
If you haven't made the disc and have to replace your internal hard drive, newer Macs (the models that DO NOT ship with a recovery disc) have a mode known as "Internet Recovery", whereby they will connect to Apple's servers, download the needed data, build the recovery partition and do a clean install of the OS. This is time intensive (obviously), but it does give you the option to do a disc-less clean install.
Why does it matter? Why not just use the disc and call it a day? Very simple, using the recovery partition is a heck of a lot faster than having to burn the disc and subsequently waiting for the install to proceed from the disc. Your hard drive is several orders of magnitude faster than your optical drive.
And Andres, it has nothing to do with being a fanboy and everything to do with educating people who are set in their ways and making things more efficient.
As far as Apple's motive goes for eliminating the disc, there seems to be a lot of speculation that it somehow pads their bottom line. But for what they'll spend on bandwidth in relation to a $0.15 disc, I highly doubt that it's a cash cow for them. It's more likely due to the fact that they've been on a mission to eliminate ODDs from their lineup.