A WEEK today Scots will be going to the polls to decide the nation's fate.

I doubt transport issues will be paramount in most voters' minds, although they do have a role to play. Take air passenger duty (APD). The Scottish Government has vowed to halve and eventually axe it in an independent Scotland, claiming this will boost tourism and lure airlines to set up new routes. Greens are less pleased by the prospect of a tax break for a major polluter, while opponents question whether the £234 million a year currently generated in APD by Scottish flights would be recouped elsewhere in the economy.

Then there are questions of what happens to cross-Border services like the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), Network Rail and the Coastguard. The White Paper said we could continue to share them; Westminster seemed less enthralled.

So for the sake of some light relief, let's cast our eyes across one of the more left-field issues occupying the boffins at the Department for Transport (DfT): spaceflight.

A little-noted memo popped up on the DfT website a couple of weeks ago, hinting at exciting times ahead. A "Memorandum of Co-operation" signed by agencies either side of the Atlantic expressed the desire of the US and UK Governments to "encourage commercial transatlantic space travel" between the two nations. The UK Government wants to establish a commercial spaceport by 2018.

The memorandum agreed to co-operation in the development of vehicles, safety regulations, industry standards and the "recovery of persons and vehicles involved in commercial space transportation". It concluded that representatives from all four agencies - the DfT, CAA, UK Space Agency and, the US Federal Aviation Authority - will "meet periodically" to work on the plans.

The move comes weeks after Scotland dominated the shortlist of potential locations for Europe's first spaceport. Six of the eight favoured UK bases are located north of the Border, including Prestwick, Campbeltown and Stornoway airports. RAF Lossiemouth, RAF Leuchars and Kinloss Barracks also made the list.

And as ambitious as commercial space travel across the Pond may sound, it is worth remembering that it is barely 76 years since the first non-stop passenger flight crossed Atlantic. The four-engined "Condor", operated by Lufthansa and carrying 26 passengers, took 25 hours to fly from Berlin to New York, where it landed on August 11, 1938.

Sir Richard Branson still intends to launch Virgin Galactic's inaugural passenger flight in New Mexico before the end of the year.

Mass-market space travel is unlikely to become affordable - let alone feasible - for several decades, but it has been estimated that the technology could eventually cut the journey time to Australia from 20 hours to two. On the same calculation, a plane journey from Glasgow to New York would be slashed from seven-and-a-half hours to 45 minutes, equivalent to the express train between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Mind-boggling today, but by 2114, who knows? After all, a Yes vote didn't even seem likely two weeks ago.