My thought is parachutes can be steered automatically by a navigation system/gps  and motorized cables nowadays.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/GPS_Guided_Parachutes_Increase_Safety_In_Resupply.html

I saw that yesterday, I think the first-stage recovery is pie in the sky.  The current one's they're launching have 'chutes, but they don't expect recovery until launch #6 or something like that.  Next one is #3, which SHOULD be November, but may get pushed back.  Depends on the Russians - NASA wants a full crew up there when Dragon arrives.

Second stage... that's a LONG ways down the road.

The capsule landing isn't as farfetched as it seems.  The concept is to use the Launch abort system and the thrusters to land.  But that's down the road, too - they're using Chutes on the current version.

I think they're concentrating on re-usability too much, but to this point, SpaceX has largely delivered with Falcon 9.  And they're selling the shit out of them - They've got 30+ launches on Manifest right now.  (For comparison, Delta IV has launched 17 times total, Atlas V, 27)  So the incentive to recover some stuff and bring costs down has got to be huge.

I just got done prototyping some bearings for Spacex.  That company has their shit together, and it shows.

Landing that top heavy bastard ought to be a real thrill.

Morons.

Exactly..........all they need to be reusable is just enough fuel for a deorbit burn and then chutes.

To quote a friend of mine from college who was heavily into everything "space" related:

"It takes off and lands vertically...  just as God and Robert Heinlein intended."

Fuel seems like a hell of problem on those powered landings.   How much fuel could they possibly be carrying.  It also seems like a waste on the return capsule.  Much more economical just to use parachutes.   I mean you have to carry all that fuel into orbit.  That'd be fairly costly and wasteful for a "cool powered landing"

 

One thing is for sure.  We need to encourage private space flight.  If the US was serious, we'd have a zero tax rate on all space-business and allow transferable passive pass-through tax-loss credits.  Allow companies and individuals to make investments in space businesses by being able to at least use or sell transferable tax-credits.  Might speed things up a bit.
 

This. Boosters carying fuel for retros? Expensive and too much energy required for orbit. Let them burn and use the fuel to lift heavier loads. Pictures are real purdy though. Just not practical.

The important thing to remember is that SpaceX is designing for low cost per pound, not performance. This rocket may have a tenth of performance of a expendable, but if it has a hundredth of the cost it is a big win.. SpaceX will keep around expendable version for payloads that have to have it.