Dan Dare and the Birth of Hi-tech Britain

Dan Dare, the classic British sci-fi comic hero, was created by illustrator Frank Hampson in 1950 Photograph: Dan Dare Corporation Ltd

Dare was the hero in the story Dan Dare, Pilot of the Future, which appeared in the Eagle comic in 1950 Photograph: Dan Dare Corporation Ltd

The Eagle was created by the Reverend Marcus Morris, then vicar in Southport, Lancashire, as a Christian antidote to the incoming wave of American comics Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

Peter Hampson reading the Eagle. His father Frank created Dan Dare and was voted Prestigioso Maestro at an international convention of strip cartoon and animated film artists held at Lucca in Tuscany in 1975 Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

Dan Dare was set in the 1990s but the dialogue and style was reminiscent of 1950s war films Photograph: Dan Dare Corporation Ltd

In the stories, Dan Dare, the chief pilot of the Interplanet Space Fleet, began his space adventures aboard the Anastasia. Arthur C Clarke acted as science and plot adviser to the first strip in Eagle Photograph: Dan Dare Corporation Ltd

After 1945, though war-weary and broke, Britain found huge pride in wartime advances such as radar, penicillin, the jet engine and the Bloodhound missile (pictured here) Photograph: Cate Gillon/Getty

The exhibition contextualises the comic in terms of the reinvention of the home in the period 1945-1970 Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

Science Museum staff try to engineer the Bloodhound missile into the building ahead of the exhibition Photograph: Cate Gillon/Getty