George Stoner began his 30 year career with Boeing in 1941 as an assistant superintendent of functional testing and retired as Senior Vice President of Operations in 1971. His long list of projects included the B-29 Superfortress, B-47 Stratojet, BoMarc missile, X-20 Dyna-Soar space plane, Saturn V rocket first stages, and the Apollo TIE (Technical Integration and Evaluation).

Stoner was awarded the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, the highest honor NASA awards to anyone who was not a government employee when the service was performed. The contribution must be so extraordinary that other forms of recognition would be inadequate. Remembered as a visionary, Stoner talked about how people would fly to other planets, and how computers would become much, much smaller and would "operate with much more high speed." He also encouraged research into advanced global communications, global navigation systems and environmental data gathering by way of satellites - long before these became commonplace.