It's not a full bi-elliptic transfer, it's missing the third "retrograde" burn. In this situation the target orbit would be inside the Sun, the third burn is co

It's not a full bi-elliptic transfer, it's missing the third "retrograde" burn. In this situation the target orbit would be inside the Sun, the third burn is completely unnecessary. Your rule of thumb comparison of the two strategy doesn't work here. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi-elliptic_transfer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bi-elliptic_transfer