Spinoff story
Programming for Design
A real-world story of NASA technology finding a life beyond the mission.
About this technology
Overview
Pullman-Standard Inc. used NASTRAN to simulate the dynamic behavior of rugged railroad cars for bulk commodity transport. NASTRAN was originally written to help design more efficient space vehicles and is by far the most widely used computer program to emerge from the Space Program. NASTRAN helps analyze behavior of elastic structures of any size, shape or purpose such as the hopper car. This program alone has been estimated to return 701 million in cost savings from 1971-1984. Use of this program has been estimated to result in a 60% improvement in predicting behavior of stressed components and a 2/3 cut in calculation time. NASTRAN is also used in designing bridges, power plants, skyscrapers, and round robin -- now the Space Shuttle.