>>11957087A station in GEO is close enough to earth that it can easily be reached with an Orion-sized capsule launched on a New Glenn-style booster, but it's also high enough up there that getting to the moon from it so little delta-V that an Orion-sized vehicle is all you need to shuttle passengers and material to the moon.
GEO is also a perfect "halfway point" for large-scale moon operations, as you have an essentially continuous launch window to get things to it, while it also "synods" with the Moon once a day, which is more than enough frequency for operations to and from it.
Also, if you're smart, like Blue Origin is, you build your Orion-sized capsule not as an Apollo/Orion/Starliner/Crew Dragon-style discrete command/service module, but as a Delta Clipper-style integrated vehicle that propulsively lands and is 100% reusable, and possibly integrates the 3rd stage as well, which means that the only lost hardware is the 2nd stage.
If I were a betting man, I'd guess that New Shepherd is quietly a testbed for a Delta Clipper-style manned 3rd stage for New Glenn, which is why it explores the use of cryogenic hydrolox, necessary for a 3rd stage meant to hit GEO, but in a propulsively-landed vehicle.
