This billionaire is training hard to go to space 'in months'

Answer: He narrates stories around fire pit.

English business magnate Richard Branson is training to be an astronaut so he could be on a spacecraft to space ‘in months’.

Talking to BBC Radio 4, the founder of Virgin Group said that the launch was close. "We're talking about months away, not years away - so it's close. There are exciting times ahead. I'm going for astronaut training; I'm going for fitness training, centrifuge and other training, so that my body will hopefully cope well when I go to space," he said.

Branson owns a space tourism company Virgin Galactic. He has been investing in the company since 2004 to make commercial space tourism a thing.

Branson acknowledged SpaceX efforts into sensing cargo into space and building bigger rockets, but he believes that the competition in the field of futuristic space tourism is between him and Jeff Bezos.

Amazon CEO owns a company named Blue Origin which according to Branson is “neck and neck as to who will put people into space first.”

"Ultimately, we have to do it safely. It's more a race with ourselves to make sure we have the crafts that are safe to put people up there," he added.

Another startup, Orion Span also announced in April that it will set up a space hotel for paying customers before 2021. The company will charge $9.5 million for the ride and 12-day stay at the station which includes the cost of the to-and-fro journey. Advance booking for the ride is open and you need to submit $80,000 to book your berth.

In recent times, space travel has become a lucrative market with multiple players like Virgin offering space journeys, some of them just one way to celestial bodies. However, in reality, the market is yet to take off as not a single commercial space flight has been made yet.