Turn of phrase: the idea falls apart, not the physical module.
But firstly, before I get into it, thank you for providing an actual response to my posts.
I see my mistake, thanks for the correction.
I'll focus primarily on the area for 'thermal control and radiation shielding.' Micrometeoroid protection doesn't seem like a priority, simply because if something so fragile as to be torn by a screwdriver acts as protection then there's little else that wouldn't.
The inside aluminum hull was fragile as it could be pierced, but the micrometeoroid protection was a priority because that was random. An astronaut can think, and know not to stab the aluminum hull. The micrometeoroid protection also did its job well. The aluminum sheets broke micrometeoroids into small fragments, stopped by successive layers. See the image on the top of page 8 for a better idea:
https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/LM04_Lunar_Module_ppLV1-17.pdf#page=8They don't have to live inside the LM, as I said. That is how things are said to be, not the necessary state. Given the lack of a lunar atmosphere, and so lack of danger from re-entry, on top of the weak gravity to minimise how much force is needed to escape it, the 'module' doesn't need to be any more than a frame with a couple of rockets attached for momentum control. Not only is this lighter, something of huge importance when it comes to space travel, but it's substantially simpler, and simpler is always going to be preferred by anyone on a mission far away from any repair shops and tools. There's less that could go wrong. The simple presence of spacesuits fulfil every other requirement of the module, and if they don't work there's no using the module anyway.
Simpler, but impossible. The suits had no way of keeping a person alive for 3 days. The astronauts were limited to the food they could eat. On Apollos 15-17 the astronauts had a fruit bar, but that was it:
. It was enough to give them a snack if they needed it in their EVAs, none of which lasted more than 7.5 hours. Astronauts ate heavily before they went on their EVAs, there's no way to provide them that food without having to take the suits off.
Another problem arises for water. Astronauts had 32oz pouches for water for the EVAs, but that can't hold a man for 3.125 days. Astronauts drank heavily before they went on EVAs as well so there was water in their system. Experts say 64oz of water should be drank per day, so for 3 days an astronaut would need a 192oz pouch of water (1.5 gal, 5.67L). That weighs 12.5 pounds (5.67 kg). Plus, the astronauts are sweating as they work, so more water would likely be needed. The suit simply couldn't hold that much water.
Another problem is the amount of air and battery power needed. For Apollos 7-14, the suits had 6.5 hours of life support. For A15-A17, it's 7.5 hours. If you live on the Moon for 3 days 3 hours, or 75 hours, you'd need 10X more air and 10X more battery power.
Overall the suit would be immensely heavy and impractical. Astronauts would have gigantic packs, far larger than they already are, making movement basically impossible.
Instead of a separate module attacked to the ship, just make a room that can serve as an airlock and strap it down inside. It doesn't need to be airtight, it doesn't need to run the risk of something being knocked loose by the force of depressurisation. That gives you living space and substantially less in the way of weight to carry and elements to go wrong.
I'm not getting a picture of this well, do you have an illustration? Do you mean something like Voskhod 2 had, with an airlock sticking out for the EVA?
This could easily be knocked loose by depressurization, or if hit by an asteroid.
Also, how would astronauts get to the LM through it? Would they need to pressurize and then depressurize the airlock, or depressurize and then repressurize the CM?
Further, if there's a fault in the LM, that only prevents the moon landing rather than cutting off astronaut living space and resources.
If there's a fault in the CM, though, the astronauts have no living space at all. This is what happened on Apollo 13. Luckily, the astronauts still had a functioning LM they could live in.
By every metric this is preferred.
Tell that to the engineers at the time.
Yes, as you say, no doubt they could plan to make the lunar module sturdy enough to take depressurisations, the astronauts be careful with how rarely they go through from one module to the other and so so less often, all of that, but the simple fact is you wouldn't want to take the risk. On any mission like this you would want to minimise how much could go wrong.
They added more, more and more moving parts prone to go wrong, even when it was unnecessary.
Dude, these are astronauts, are you serious? These people were test pilots. Every day they had to get into a new plane that could, at any moment, kill them (and there was a good chance of that happening). One test pilot was dying every week in the 50s. These people also had to get on top of a rocket with enough fuel that, if something went wrong, an explosion comparable to a small atomic bomb would occur. I'm confident that they were aware of the risk, and I'm also confident that they would accept the risk.
I don't understand this argument. By its very nature, an airlock is part of the ship. It is substantially more secure than a docking port that is literally made to split apart. If something hits it, the LM blows away, most of their living space and possibly the astronauts themselves are knocked away with it.
If something hit the airlock, it'd also blow away too, killing the astronauts.
They had airtight walls and a vessel capable of holding that pressure, mechanisms capable of depressurising and surviving that force, special legs they left behind, hell they even threw in a ladder...
The airtight walls, as I explained above, were necessary because a space suit couldn't keep a man alive for three days. The ladder's mass was negligible, but the ladder was necessary for getting down to the surface, and back into the LM. This is pretty obvious.
The "special legs" I'm assuming means the descent stage. This is also necessary. If you didn't have the descent stage, problems could, and would arise. First, if you only had one stage, and that stage's engine breaks on landing, you won't be getting off of the surface. This actually happened on Apollo 15, but because they had the ascent stage, no worry was needed. A single stage spacecraft would also have to be far larger and carry more propellant (thus being heavier) because it would need to carry things no longer needed, such as used propellant tanks, fuel cells, landing legs, and more. By having two stages, these things don't have to be carried. It's the same reason rockets have multiple stages, to discard excess mass.
Really? You get automatically shiny, triumphant colors, symmetrical designs...
Go behind the scenes at any factory, especially for the manufacture of vehicles. The real mechanisms never look nearly so pretty as those in the space programme, despite the fact the space programme has a hundred times the reasons to be concerned with practicality and to not waste weight and money on style.
The space program was concerned with looks, but they weren't going to let it control the spacecraft's design. Much of the look of the spacecraft is because that's how it had to be. Gold foil? That's used for thermal control and shielding. Octagonal descent stage? Far easier to build than a circle, or other shape, and allows more cargo to be held. Boxy ascent stage? That's simply the outer skin molding around the aluminum hull.