But the lunar module did need to be pressurized. Or do you think that it's possible to spend several days sealed in a space suit? How do you suppose they were supposed to eat or drink if they couldn't get out of their space suits and into a pressurized environment?
As has already been mentioned in this thread, the limited number of missions in which they had to spend that much time on the moon they did have water and food in the spacesuits.
How much food and water did they have in the space suits? I'll give you a hint, it wasn't nearly enough for the 3 days that Apollo 17 spent on the moon.
But rather than just assuming what you've been told is right, simple counter question: what possible purpose did spending several days on the moon's surface achieve? They collected rocks, supposedly from different seas each time so it's not like they needed to travel for more data...
Are you saying that collecting more samples from different areas and setting up more experiments are bad things? If you're going to all of the bother to go to the moon, wouldn't it make sense to collect as much data as possible?
...and like you say they would need to return to the lander so it's not like they could go too far anyway. There is nothing that could not be done in just a few hours.
That's why Apollo 15-17 took lunar rovers with them, so they could go farther and gather more diverse samples.
there's no need for the lunar module to be a pressure vessel
>> are you suggesting they should have been suited up for the whole duration?
Yes. Do you want a medal?
No, but I think your suggestion is totally impractical.
Break down what you're saying. What you are proposing is that the lunar lander served as a homebase, and that they went out from it without food or water, explored, gathered a whole bunch of rocks over a larger area without any feasible way to keep track of which came from where, then had to stop and turn around and go back to the lander to eat, spend the night, then go out the next day presumably in a different direction; not that the other direction gives them anything special. Ditto for the rover, that lets them go further but what else are they going to gather? They already have multiple landing sites, supposedly, from mission to mission. The lunar rover's just more merchandizing, it too fundamentally fails to make sense.
Alternately a lightweight, non-airtight lunar lander is something they could pretty much bring with them. Instead of spending several days wandering back and forth they could just strike out in one direction, and keep going twice as far, likely even more so with replaceable air so the only sticking points are going to be food and water. Sure, they won't be spending days down there, but they still
don't need to. You can talk about making the most of it all you want, but there's nothing of significance taht their set-up allows them to do over days that couldn't be done in hours.
Are you serious? Just about every engineering project ever has contradictory and conflicting requirements so you wind up with a lot of compromises. Why should a trip to the moon be any different?
Because there's a solution that solves both, as I have said repeatedly, rather than requiring the mental gymnastics to expect they'd go for both airtight and lightweight and in doing so make it staggeringly unsafe and unnecessarily heavy.