[Phantasm]

Originally Posted by weby

That depends on how fidgety the systems are, if you need to do a long and complex tuning of the drive system in a setting is totally different from one where you just turn the key and fly away. Also in some fictional settings from books a ship is never turned off and in others you need a new engine after each jump and so on.

Overall:
Seconds: It is like stepping into a car and driving off
Minutes: It is like flying off in a private plane or casting off in a larger boat.
Hours or days: It is like starting a large industrial plant.

Way I figure it: SM 0 through SM +3 craft are in the seconds to half a minute under normal circumstances; SM +4 through SM +8 is in the several minutes level, as you're typically following a standard checklist of system by system, like most modern aircraft; and at SM +9 and up you're looking at 15 minutes to an hour to go from a cold start. I should note that at SM +9 and up you're probably almost never fully powered down unless you're dry-docked; even modern naval ships keep their power plants running while docked in order to speed up deployment.