[Firestarter]

Lunar dust

One of the many problems in a (real) lunar mission would be to get in and out of the lunar module. There would be problems that are comparable to being sucked out of plane by the difference in pressure (but the other way around). The way to solve this would be to depressurise (the inside of) the lunar module before exiting.

To make the door (hatch) better at keeping the vacuum “out” it would open to the inside of the module. This would make it much more difficult to get out of the lunar module.
See the hatch of the 13 Lunar Module turning to the inside.


The hatch was only 32 inches square wide and high. The height would be an even bigger problem than the width (especially with the backpack).
There should have been major concerns that those magical suits would tear getting in and out of the module.
There would (again) be the major problem of testing, because the space suits (on earth) weigh something like 200 pounds.

NASA made instruction manuals for just about any part of the mission but not for getting in and out of the Lunar Module. Not even on how to depressurise the lunar module before exiting and repressurising it after getting back from an excursion on the moon surface.

According to Apollo 15 astronaut they did training with the space suit and backpack in 1/6 gravity on earth (g). They could have only done that in a dropping plane, but NOT in vacuum and radiation comparable to that on the moon.
Maybe they could have put a model of a Lunar Module including hatch in the plane though:

I'm wondering if we ever did any ingress training at one-sixth g. I don't think we did[1]. I was just surprised that I had such difficulty [with LM egress and ingress on the moon], because I'd done a lot of practice in one g with the backpack on because, originally, in the LTA-8 tests -- for the thermal vacuum chamber -- they were going to use the PLSS under one-g conditions. You know, climb the ladder and go through the hatch, just like we do on the Moon. I'd done that several times and had no difficulty.

http://www.clavius.org/lmdoors.html
(archived here: http://archive.is/JAS03)


Another huge problem would be the lunar dust that would pile up in the lunar module every time the astronauts returned from an excursion on the moon surface. They could try to clean that with water, but that wouldn’t be very effective (I have experienced several holidays in a house on the beach covered with sand).
According to NASA this lunar dust has serious adverse health effects.
On later missions they reportedly brought a vacuum cleaner...

The Apollo 11 crew members reported:

Particles covered everything and a stain remained even after our best attempts to brush it off;
[d]istinct pungent odor like gunpowder [was] noted when helmet [was] removed.

During Apollo 12, the crew members noted several issues on dust in the lunar and central module:

Both LM and CM contaminated with lunar dust;
[LM] was filthy dirty and had so much dust that when I took my helmet off, I was almost blinded. Junk immediately got into my eyes;
[t]he whole thing was just a cloud of fine dust floating around in there.

On the way back in the CM the system could not handle the dust, so it was continuously spread inside the spacecraft by the system;
[w]e chose to remain in the suit loop as much as possible because of the dust and debris floating around;
[t]o keep our eyes from burning and our noses from inhaling these small particles, we left our helmet sitting on top of our heads

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_he...t_exposure