Starship Kruger is the precusor to a number of large human exploration vessels I have done as a mature science ficiton artist including Starship Inquiry, Interstellar Exploration Vessel Leviathan, Deep Space Explorer Aquarius, and Deep Space Explorer Inspiration. Started while I was still a teenager, Starship Kruger evolved over several years and was finished during my early years in college. The drawings were done using pencil, ink pens, thin line black markers, color markers, color pencil, and crayon. Some of the drawings were quite large ranging up to 79 inches (200 cm) long by 17 inches (43 cm) tall.

Conceived as a large Starfleet cruiser from an era about a century after that of the original USS Enterprise, Starship Kruger filled the same role in my personal version of the Star Trek universe that the Galaxy Class / USS Enterprise-D served in the Star Trek canon. Obviously influenced as much by the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey as the original Star Trek TV series and Star Trek: The Motion Picture, this project shows how I struggled to combine my own vision of future human starships with that of Star Trek. The starships depicted in Star Wars in 1977, prior to my first version of Starship Kruger, no doubt also subtly influenced its design.

I hope fans of my mature work will enjoy seeing this project from my teenage years and comparing it to the large exploration starship designs I have done since.

PRIMARY DESIGN INFLUENCES

1. Spaceship Discovery from the science-fiction film 2001: A Space Odyssey

2. Original version of the USS Enterprise from the original Star Trek TV series

3. Updated version of the USS Enterprise from Star Trek: The Motion Picture