Apple finally admits that if your boot drive fails, you can't boot from your boot drive. It's easy. Download the 1MB application (from Apple's support site, not from the Mac App Store) and run it. You'll be prompted to connect a USB stick and warned that everything on that stick will be erased. Agree, enter your password and wait for a minute or two, and that's it.
This Recovery Disk obviously doesn't contain the full Lion installer. Instead, it acts like the Recovery Disk Partition that Lion hides on your boot drive when you first install it.
Gadget Lab, Apple Launches Lion Recovery Disk Assistant
