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Originally Posted by frenat
Well the moon was not completely unknown. We had sent probes there as well as a few manned missions that didn't land. The moon is the same distance from the sun so we know how much sunlight it receives and it is too small to have any appreciable atmosphere so we knew to expect a vacuum. I'm sure others can go into more detail but we really knew quite a bit about the environment before setting foot there.
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Its actually relatively simple. There are really two basic conditions a space suit must provide: temperature and pressure. The moon is in a vacuum. A vacuum is a vacuum. They are all pretty much the same. Next is temperature - even without a probe on the moon, you can read temperature simply by looking at it in infrared: the color of the light is determined by temperature.
Now there are, of course, other issues: sunlight (face shield), mobility, communications, etc., but none of those issues are specific to being on the moon.