A Queensland man who won a worldwide competition to fly to outer space is preparing for lift-off after five days of intense training.

Tim Gibson has just returned to Australia after the training camp at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida.

The 28-year-old Yeppoon property manager is not an astronaut, but was among 23 people selected in a competition run by the Lynx Space Academy to fly to outer space.

He was initially selected from more than 1 million entrants.

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, who became the second person ever to walk on the moon with the Apollo 11 mission, was in the same room when the winners were announced.

"Then they called my name and I thought, no way! No way!" Mr Gibson said.

He says training for the trip has been an incredible experience so far with zero-gravity flights and drills in fighter jets.

"We did a bit of dog fighting, loops, barrel rolls," he said.

"I didn't pass out and wasn't sick which was great."

Space travel on horizon

The group is scheduled to head to outer space early next year.

"I'll be taking off from an island just south of Florida and we'll take off like a conventional aircraft," Mr Gibson said.

"The only exception is we'll be powered by four liquid hydrogen rocket boosters so we'll accelerate three times the speed of sound in under 60 seconds and be going vertically."

Mr Gibson says he will spend six to eight minutes in outer space where he will be weightless looking out over Earth.

Tim Gibson poses with astronaut Buzz Aldrin.

"To look down from the heavens and look at the curvature of the earth, the land mass, water, clouds, everything," he said.

"That view has only been afforded to very limited amount of people in our history and to be afforded that opportunity is quite incredible."

Mr Gibson gained his pilot's licence several years ago but could not fulfil his dream of joining the Australian Air Force because his eyesight strength was just below the allowable limits.

Among the other winners was New Zealander Hamish Fagg, a 21-year-old engineering graduate, who will become the first Kiwi in space.

The trip is organised by Space Expedition Corporation, which manages private flights on the Lynx aircraft.