Ok, good point about the inclination. I still don't see why circularizing the orbit would be wasteful. Circularizing an elliptical orbit at apogee still requir

Ok, good point about the inclination. I still don't see why circularizing the orbit would be wasteful. Circularizing an elliptical orbit at apogee still requires positive delta-v, which will help you on the way to the hyperbolic orbit. Only if you want to circularize at perigee would you need to slow down, which would indeed be extremely wasteful. It's true that you get more energy boost for the delta-v if you do it early rather than late, but I don't know if the ellipticity of the launch orbit is high enough for that difference to qualify as "extremely" wasteful. But maybe it is.