Interesting. If you don't mind me asking, how do you plan to do this? Grants? Investors? Trust fund?

If you can sustain yourself longer than 6 months, have you considered just starting your own lab/business?

The plan is basically early semi-retirement - not tax payer funded tenure. That seems to have come across wrong - the idea is to find a way to fund myself (through my own earnings /savings /business) so Incan do the things I really want.