For a career that truly fits the description, "out of this world," take a look at Dr. Joseph P. Allen, jet pilot, astronaut and scientist. He worked in Mission Control for the Apollo 15 and 17 flights to the moon and has been in space twice himself on shuttle missions in the early 1980s.

Dr. Allen gained his Bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from DePauw University and earned a Master's and a Ph.D. in physics at Yale. At present, he is chairman of Veridian (formerly Calspan SRL) Corporation. Previously, he was president and chief executive officer of Space Industries International, until it merged with Calspan in 1985.

He won a Fulbright Scholarship to Germany in 1959-60 and since has amassed a substantial number of awards for flying, planning space operations and scientific achievement. He was a research associate in the Nuclear Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington before his selection as an astronaut in 1967. He was a staff physicist at the Nuclear Structure Laboratory at Yale and served as a guest research associate at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.

He has logged more than 3,000 hours flying time in jet aircraft.

After serving on the astronaut support crew for Apollos 15 and 17, he boarded the first fully operational shuttle flight in November, 1982, as a mission specialist. The four-man crew launched the first two commercial communications satellites.

He returned to space in 1984 as a mission specialist on the second flight of the Discovery shuttle. With the completion of this flight, which both launched and recovered satellites, Dr. Allen had logged a total of 314 hours in space.

Allen was honored as an Outstanding American by the National Wrestling Hall of Fame in 1998.