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Have you ever seen a cow jump over the moon? You might if George W Bush gets his way. The US President has gone on record saying he wants to put Americans back on the moon by 2015 to establish a sustained base to be used as a staging post for Martian exploration.

And it's not just the Americans getting in on the act, we're also getting excited in Europe. Bernard Foing, of the European Space Agency, predicts humans could be living on the moon in as little as 20 years.

Can the moon sustain life?

The moon has no air, no water and no power supply to support a human colony. Transporting enough food, air, water and batteries from Earth to sustain a community would be massively expensive.

So surely moon colonies are a non-starter?

Well, no. The scientists say the moon has a constant supply of solar energy, the perfect power source for the lunar pioneers who could assemble prefabricated shelters which could be landed there relatively easily.

But what about food and water?

New discoveries suggest that producing air, water and even food on the moon is not that far fetched. Scientists have found ice in deep craters on the pitch black lunar south pole. More remarkable still, the loose, powdery dust that covers the surface of the moon is about 45% oxygen.

So 20 years from now, you could be living on the moon, growing your own food with moon air, in lunar soil and with polar water all self-sufficiently inside a space greenhouse. A sort of interstellar version of The Good Life.