While first a physicist and, later, a systems analyst for the U.S. Army, Mr. Penn worked for Bellcomm from 1965-1971, with the primary goal of assisting NASA's Office of Manned Space Flight with the accomplishment of the manned lunar landing. Mr. Penn's activities with Bellcomm were in interpreting and analyzing for NASA's management the space experiments planned for the Gemini, Apollo, and Skylab programs. He was also an enthusiastic proponent of the earliest possible manned exploration of Mars. In 1985, in recognition of his being one of the founding members of The Planetary Society, his Army employer appointed him to the Army's Space Initiative Study, where he played a key role in helping the Army plan and understand the role of space in supporting the Army's missions.