The closest thing the average layman is likely to get to the aluminized films used on the LM is a potato chip (crisp, in Commonwealth) wrapper. The same process makes those. They have nearly all the optical properties of metals and nearly all the mechanical properties of plastics. We still use those materials extensively on spacecraft today. So I'm absolutely floored when conspiracy people say it doesn't look like a spaceship, when there are plenty of examples of other actual spacecraft that use laid-up films as their thermal blankets.
Structurally the LM was meant to be very light and very strong. The ascent stage had to be built to enclose a habitable volume, so it was built using a small handful of heavy structural elements around which was composed a balloon of stiffened aluminum skin. That's how you do it. That's essentially how the space shuttle was built too.
The methods developed for building the unpressurized descent stage are still very much how we do structural design today for unmanned spacecraft. We typically build a chassis of stiffened plates in some particular intersecting pattern. All the key components are attached somewhere to those plates and then covered with a thin skin or blankets.
I've spoken about the tape before. Industrial pressure-sensitive adhesives are nothing like what is sold to the general public. I use Mylar tapes that are sticky enough to need a trip to the hospital if you accidentally stick it to your skin. If you saw where LM-2's outer covering was in the worst distress, prior to its restoration a few years ago, it certainly wasn't the tape. And that's the proper way to fasten blankets together, or to certain kinds of underlying structure. Piercing fasteners such as screws or rivets create points where the mechanical stress concentrates and risks tearing the blanket, just like the front page in every loose-leaf binder.
