Into the 1960s with Enthusiasm
First the Soviets put dogs in space (they didn't return). Then we sent monkeys, and later a chimp, on round trips. NASA's rockets and capsules seemed ready, but it took more than a year to finalize the procedures for sending Alan Shepherd into space. While he waited, Yuri Gagarin eventually went there and back. A month later, we listened to radio coverage via the PA system, as Shepherd took America's first space flight. Three years later, when we graduated from HHS, Project Mercury had run its course, and Project Gemini test flights were in progress.
Unlike his non-human predecessors in space, NASA's Ham actually
performed tasks, like moving levers on command.
Wikipedia.org
President Kennedy's ability to inspire made deep impressions. He described space as The New Frontier, and he championed the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo projects that had been started in the 1950s during the Eisenhower Administration.
The Physical Fitness movement arose because draftees and enlistees who joined the American military were arriving in increasingly bad shape. Ike's Council on Youth Fitness had been unable to improve things, but Kennedy succeeded, in part by re-purposing an old memo from Teddy Roosevelt. TR had challenged Marines to go on 50-mile hikes; now, JFK used the same wording to urge all Americans to go on them.
author's collection
I, for one, would have gladly hiked 50 miles back then instead of enduring "Physical Fitness Mondays" in Phys Ed. Each week, immediately following Lunch, I faced 50 minutes of calisthenics, steadily working during the year up to 75 of these, 200 of those, a ¼ mile lap on the track, etc. Male students all endured these sessions, and many eventually received Marine Corps fitness certificates.
***
