San Fransisco’s  somafm.com (along with Jersey City’s own WMFU) is one of our favorite internet radio destinations.

Both offer consistently good (although quite different) music – but during Space Shuttle missions, somafm also streams “Mission Control” a mashup of the live NASA communications feed mixed over ambient electronic music.   The effect is  remarkable – minutes of ambient music will go by, and suddenly some mundane communication between the shuttle and Nasa will occur, rendered somehow strangely poignant by the underlying music.

The classic argument against space exploration – that there are more than enough problems down here on Earth to invest in fixing first – has sadly never seemed more compelling.  The topic was brought into focus again this week by the Obama administration’s call to increase NASA funding while switching the focus away from moon trips and towards longer-term technologies that could make a Mars expedition a possibility in our lifetimes.

Not surprisingly, this has since become the political argument/outrage of the week rather than the scientific discussion it probably should be – meanwhile, somafm’s “Mission Control” remains a great example of the kind of innovative niche programming the “long-tail” of the internet makes possible – and an interesting blurring of the lines between art and  science.

For those of you who are interested, tune in Monday morning May 19th, as Discovery is scheduled to reenter the Earth’s atmosphere at 7:43 AM EDT…