John Cole has a Bachelor of Engineering Physics from Auburn University (1962). Upon retirement in 2008 John consulted with ALATEC on several Commercial Orbital Transportation projects and occasional brief assessments, for other organizations, of potential advanced propulsion concepts. Before retirement, while at NASA Marshall, he was a Project Manager of the Advanced Propulsion Research (APR) Project office responsible for planning and funding 40 research projects per year at several NASA Centers (Marshall, Glenn, JPL, etc.) other agency laboratories (AFRL-Edwards, Los Alamos, LLNL, etc.), numerous universities, and several small businesses. Research included: laser propulsion, magnetic launch assist, pulse detonation rocket engines, magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) bypass engines, MHD thrusters, superconducting magnets for propulsion, VASIMR, a small nuclear reactor concept and associated component testing for space propulsion, a down-hole nuclear engine test concept, magnetic mirror plasma confinement, magnetized target fusion concept and component testing, high power MPD thrusters, antimatter storage, carbon nano-tube magnet concepts and component tests, advanced hydrocarbon fuels, metallic hydrogen, and many others. Earlier at Marshall he interacted with NASA HQ management to create the X-34 project and served as Deputy Project Manager. Before the X-34 he served as an SE&I manager on Space Station, mostly at Marshall but with 3 tours of duty at NASA-HQ. Before Space Station he was a Marshall branch manager in operations research supporting the Space Lab Project and early space station concepts. After Auburn he worked trajectory analysis and navigation for the Marshall Preliminary Design Office, specifically mathematical modeling of the Saturn ST-124 inertial platform for Apollo, and other navigation sensors for other mission concepts including X-ray telescope optics. In addition to 20 technical papers, he has technical affiliations as an Associate Fellow of AIAA, a member of the National Space Society, a Fellow of National Speleological Society, and is a member of the SPS (Society of Physics Honor Students). Mr. Cole will be advising the Kepler team with regards to all of Kepler’s products, their engineering, manufacturing, testing and marketing.