I finally stumbled upon a post in the Blender/External Tools Section of the forum [here][1].
Basically, the model was doing the "default-take" animation from Blender, and the solution was to force it to not import animations, since my ship is a static model anyway. Suddenly, it responds instantly to physics like it should.
[1]: http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/101336-Solved-Blender-Animations-amp-Physics-Delay.
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