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OTOH orbit is halfway to everywhere.

As long as you don't mind a travel time measured in centuries.

Orbit is precisely halfway to the boundary of a region of space for which double of the to-orbit energy is required to attain. It's barely "anywhere" much less "everywhere."

It's a saying, "If you get to LEO, you're halfway to anywhere in the Solar System", and it reflects the amount of deltaV you need to spend to reach Earth orbit, which happens to be around the half of what you need to complete the trip to another body.

(NOTE: you lose a lot of deltaV fighting air resistance)

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