Live CD : can it be put on a USB stick instead ?!

[Vincent Trouilliez]

Hi guys (and girls),

The more I spend time fiddling with Feisty Live CDs to track
development and report bugs, the more I am annoyed by the slowness
(and noise) of the CD drive every time it needs to access anything.
It really feels like middle age compared to the cutting edge OS that it
holds...
With 1GB USB stick costing only 15 Euros, and every computer having a
USB port, and USB sticks having a much better access time than optical
drives, as well as being silent, and convenient/small/rugged, well I was
wondering if it would be possible to put the Live CD image on a USB
stick and boot from that ? I understand it's a bit simplistic/naive,
but you get the idea... is there a way as of today, to achieve this one
way or another, or is it just a dream ? ISTR that recently Mandriva had
something like this. They sold a USB stick which served as a Live "CD",
well how to put it.. "environment", and part of the USB stick could be
used to store data. Would be cool if Ubuntu, on top of ISO CD/DVD
images, provided images that could go to a USB stick. I might try to
push the idea, if it's not already in Launchpad somewhere as a spec.
I think (?) that ISO images can only be written to the same media type
that they were created from (?), so I don't even dream that I could
"burn" the CD ISO on to a USB key, of course.. But, could it be
possible to just copy the ISO file on the USB stick, then add a small
program that would be booted by the motherboard, which then mounts the
ISO, and works from there ?
Or maybe could it be possible to mount the ISO, then copy all the files
in it, onto the stick, and make the stick bootable ? How can one make a
USB stick bootable, I rush to ask ??
Anyway, you got the point...basically, is there ANY way at all, to use
the Live "CD" from a USB stick/external hard drive/whatever USB storage
device ?

Thank you ! 

--
Vince, did try to be concise... will try harder next time...