Once you are in orbit, anything else is possible. Because if you can get something small to orbit, you can get a lot of small things (such as additional fuel) to orbit, to reach escape velocity. That is because once in orbit you no longer have a need to reach the next velocity stage as rapidly as possible, which is why ion engines are so efficient but can only be used after LEO.

If you can make it to orbit, you can make it anywhere (it just may take multiple launches to assemble/fuel the spacecraft going elsewhere).

Wait, really? So what's the deal of first and second cosmic velocity?

I guess the idea is that if you can make it to orbit (even if you waste all of your fuel), then you could in principle refuel in-orbit (by getting another unmanned rocket with just fuel into orbit) and thus escape the orbit.

But yes, you still require more energy (exactly sqrt(2) times as much) to "escape" Earth's gravity entirely than to orbit it with a circular orbit.

Exactly twice as much energy. √2 as much velocity.

You're quite right -- that was a typo. ;)

Making orbit is a single hard step; raising orbit, which is all that making it to the moon requires, can be done more gradually (with low-thrust/high-efficiency engines, on-orbit resupply, etc).

So if you can get off the planet you can get anywhere... but that doesn't mean cost-effectively. If your planet is such that it takes a Saturn V to launch a cubesat, it may simply cost too much to make it to the Moon.