This interview reviews Bergstralh's childhood and early impressions of manned space exploration; his years as a graduate student at the University of Texas; his experience as a National Research Council fellow, and his time at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as a senior scientist and member of the technical staff. He speaks at some length of his student-teacher relationship with G.H. Vaucouleurs. Other topics discussed include: NASA's Planetary Astronomy Program Office (now the Solar System Exploration Division, part of the Office of Space Science), activities at the University of Texas McDonald Observatory, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Table Mountain Observatory. With Bergstralh's employment history, most of his recollections involve NASA and a history of the research and administration of NASA headquarter and branches during the 1960s and 1970s.
