Okay, since the London Eye is so popular, New York will do it one better?

Original it is not. And I liked the comment that the original, original Ferris Wheel (in Chicago I think that was) was bigger than this.

Okay, so I've served on a carrier. But seriously, do we NEED 12 carrier battle groups? Mind you, a typical battle group isn't just the carrier -- it's the carrier, plus a few destroyers, plus a few fast-frigates, plus an attack sub or two. Not to mention the 120 planes in the squadrons -- attack, fighter, AWACS, anti-submarine.

Surely 10 groups is enough. Perhaps even 8.

SlashDot, ThinkGeek, AND SourceForge? Man, that's about 1/2 my normal browsing. I agree trying to change stuff will kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. But I've seen a lot of dead geese in my time.

It occurs to me -- if you wanted to use a parachute system to lower a 100-foot-tall booster safely, it would still be necessary to develop much of the needed technology for vertical landing. That's true even if it's mostly an empty tin can.

You'd need this to slow the booster from sub-orbital speed, and orient the booster, and remove much of the spin, so that when the parachute(s) do come out the booster doesn't break in half and the parachutes shred.

As other commentators have pointed out, it makes little sense to return to the launch pad, and even Musk himself has said that. So the first stage decellerates then parachutes into the Atlantic for pick-up. The second stage uses a heat shield to bleed off velocity, THEN the vertical landing system to orient and bleed off more velocity, THEN a parachute system to land... somewhere.

The big dangers of a vertical landing is having something "go wrong" at the last minute and that 100 foot tower fall over and explode. Parachuting down following a complete stop at 100 feet (especially with a 'tilt' to horizontal) could avoid a lot of this. I wonder how much that first stage weighs when empty? Is it difficult to parachute something that size and weight?

The Lego Mindstorm environment is excellent for showing how software can effect physical action in the real world. They have a graphical programming environment easily grasped by 7 years olds. A few point and click actions and you can change the behavior of an attached robot. And an "NQC" simple C text environment is available free. $200 for the box with 'Brick' computer.