What makes a CD-ROM bootable?

I am wondering what makes a CD bootable, and more specifically, if it
is possible to write some kind of boot sector that will load another
program (also on the CD-ROM) into memory and run it (all without an
OS).

I opened my master boot record in a HEX editor, but the task of
translating the hex into x86 assembly language seems daunting. Is
there a utility that would do this for me? I was thinking then I
could figure out how it loads an OS and alter it to load one of my
programs.

Does this seem feasible?

Thanks,
Scott
.

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