The Nation - News from July 22, 1988

Taking a cue from heart surgeons, engineers are considering a thin tube with an expandable balloon on the end to plug a leak that threatens a long delay of the next space shuttle mission. To work, the device would have to follow a tortuous path 20 feet through a half-inch line that contains six sharp bends. It would be something like a medical procedure known as an angioplasty, but instead of opening a clogged artery, it would close off the leaking line. This approach is just one of several being weighed to fix the small leak on the launch pad and avoid rolling Discovery back to a hangar for repairs, which could delay the planned early September launch by as much as two months.