No, my comparison is totally valid. I'm quite aware of the fill effect in orbit, mainly from other objects but also from earth to a slight degree. You've still got a huge amount of contrast and tonal RANGE in the NASA image, and that ain't present in most CG. I've probably spent a couple thousand hours studying earthscapes and NASA craft, looking specifically to duplicate the contrast levels for filmmaking purposes, and in order to accomplish this, I wound up having to take dimensional artwork out of doors to photograph in sunlight, just to make something that read okay. If I'd wanted something mushy looking, I could have done that easily indoors using normal lighting, but I wanted something that looked right.
You're right that there would be some fill effect on the E from the clouds and such, but you're not so far back from the ship to have the softening atmospherics to keep the dark shadow side from registering a lot more strongly. Again, all you have to do is look at a sunlit shot of a real plane and see the contrast levels.
I honestly don't think most filmmakers care if their stuff looks right at this point, because the audiences have been dumbed down into buying off on this painterly look (even for stuff that is supposed to be photorealistic.) If you want good CG spaceship stuff, look at SOLARIS. That was done at 4K by people who cared, for a demanding director, and it is really the exception that proves the rule as far as CG for me.
Pretty much any good-looking space-based film with ships -- SPACE COWBOYS and EVENT HORIZON leap to mind -- has been done predominantly with miniatures, and originated ON FILM, which gets you the full dynamic range (highlights AND shadows, not just one end of the scale or the other), something you can't even approach with digital capture. Even Kodak, which has pushed digital awfully hard, has admitted in their mag that film is way past what you can get digitally in terms of range.
As to the argument put forth elsewhere in the thread that the 'cartoony' look is a deliberate one ... I don't buy that for a second. I have seen a few shots from TosReMarketed that aren't horrible (I think they were orbit shots in TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY, but won't swear to that, I've only skimmed past a few times), and those shots DID have the blacks looking right, and they even had virtual lens on that was similar to the ones used for close flybys on the physical model on the original series. If they can do it there, but cartoony it up elsewhere, it is more likely a matter of time and cost, not stylistic intent, since the more photoreal stuff really jumps out compared to the usual hanna-barbera monstrosities.