Setting games in recent (or indeed still ongoing) conflicts tends to get a lot of adverse publicity. Which is why CoD since Modern Warfare has always taken place either been about terrorism, in the future or in Genericistan. EA did set that Warfighter game in a current conflict though but those games get a lot less publicity than CoD.
One problem with War In Space is nobody actually knows how it will go, since it hasn't really happened yet - even if it has in secret it's on a very small scale. So there's no real argument to be had about realism - you might as well have rayguns and jetpacks anyway.
Not that your average CoD player cares where it's set I suspect. It could look like
Super Hot and as long as you had K/D ratios and kill streaks, most people would be happy.