The lessons from disruptive innovation suggest that these technologies may never be as good as the absolute best human tutor (for example, the raw capacity of vacuum tubes still outpaces that of transistors, which disrupted the vacuum tubes in the consumer electronics market), but they will be plenty close.

FORBES: How Machine-Based Tutoring Could Disrupt Human Tutors

"When you slide that door open, all of the electronics are exposed to the near-vacuum, so we had to develop a solid-state breaker that was monitoring actual loads across that circuit, " Thompson said.

ENGADGET: Art Thompson, Red Bull Stratos' technical project director, talks circuit breakers, wind shear and biomedical data