Bi-elliptic to lunar midway

I've been talking Hohmann a lot here, getting from one orbit to another orbit, neither orbit being too different. I wondered if anyone had found other transfer possibilities since that German guy. Turns out that Ary Sternfeld way back in in 1934 figured upon a "bi-elliptic" track.

As usual there are maths, more maths than even I like to do, but Kerbalians have done the gist of it. Basically bi-elliptic trades speed for efficiency. High initial burn and then... you wait. And you only use it to get from a low orbit to a very high one, as in 12:1 semimajor. So... not Earth to Saturn (9.537 AU) but assuredly Venus (0.723 AU) to Saturn. I assume you can't / won't use inner-planet assists between Venus and Saturn - but from an inner planet using Venus as assist, yeah, we'll have that thrust. If you pay off the SVL2 cowboy.

Fission might help to get you started; fusion would be better, maybe Zubrin's saltwater reactor later.

This site points out that Hohmann is still competitive between 11.94 to 15.58. It depends on the size of the ellipse (doesn't everything). That matters from a planetary perspective because beyond a certain height we would be taking interference from other bodies, like the Sun. From Earth there's the Moon before that.

Where everyone gets hot over this is in pushing from LEO to twelve or more times that, say 9000 km semimajor to 120000, definitely beyond 140000. That is far above geostationary (and Van Allen), but remains 'neath halfway to the Moon. The real midway is above that, at TL L1, solved here. Nobody is using nuclear fission for this. Sadly.

For my interests I'm hoping Venus herself gets satellites in all sorts of orbit. Let's use worstcase 15.58 for our factor. The limit of permanent influence, where I might be orbiting farms, is 536412 km. I can use bi-elliptic to reach that high up from 34430 km or below. Aim it so that the elliptic apocytheree is still in the capture-ellipsoid, so at right angles to the Sun. Time it so that the orbit is right.

REVERSE 11/19/22: Better-late-than-never, the alternative to Crazy Hermann. This starts with a transfer from starting orbit to that transfer ellipse - with periapsis very close to the central body. Down the well, we don't shift again to the lower orbit. Instead somehow the main vessel finds its own way to yeet itself starward. If the central body is the Sun, several options open up: a Solar I_sp drive, or the boosted lightsail (with returning booster).