How Star Citizen will handle death and ship loss is still somewhat undecided, but the general consensus is that your character can never actually die, and that the pledge ships will always come back for free (minus components). But how often should ship loss occur? And how long should it take to get back to where you were?
In Privateer you often ended up destroying 2-3 enemies as soon as you arrived at a nav point, like they weren't even there. Going against human players, the game will not likely be set-up to let kills happen that frequently. This is probably necessary, but it makes the game a lot more boring. You will show up for a fight, and if you're too strong for the enemy they will just run. If they stay to fight and you start to win then the game might just let them run still. If SC really places a premium on ship survival then it might even set up shields and armor to be very strong while weapons are relatively weak. Actually accomplishing anything in a massively multiplayer combat environment is going to be tedious...maybe.
Another issue is transit times. Where does the game reset you? Your home system? The nearest base? Is your ship ready to fly already?
One alternative would be that you don't even have set characters, you just pick existing pilots to fly as out of the established universe, they ARE mortal, and if they die you go play as someone else. That preserves willing suspension of disbelief, removes the need to nerf any of the combat, and lets transit times be optional.
However they accomplish it, what are your preferences for gameplay? The poll gives arbitrary times for examples.