I do wonder if a F96T12 215w VHO fluorescent tube can be safely preheated on a 175w H39 MV ballast using a 80w-225w tanning bed starter. I understand both 175w MV lamps and 215w VHO fluorescent lamps both run at 1.5a and I understand they have fairly close operating voltages.

The 215W 1.5A lamp has about 160V arc voltage, that sounds like quite a lot for a 220V OCV MV ballast.
The MH variant (with about 300V OCV) should be fine though...

The 215W 1.5A lamp has about 160V arc voltage, that sounds like quite a lot for a 220V OCV MV ballast.
The MH variant (with about 300V OCV) should be fine though...

What will happen to the VHO tube on the 175w H39 MV ballast?

I understand that a 175w MV lamp runs at 130v. I am thinking about using a tanning bed starter rated from 80w-225w to preheat the lamp.

What will happen to the VHO tube on the 175w H39 MV ballast?

It might fire up (not sure if the OCV would be enough), but you .might. overheat the ballast? basically sounds like its too much lamp length (what I don't know is if a MV works like a HPF or LPF in regards to lamp-length...that would determine if you overdrive or underdrive the ballast)

A F72T12 VHO 160w/1500ma/~106v OCV should be enough for fire up, but it would probably be too short lamp length (which like above it depends on how the ballast works as to whether or not you overdrive it)

If such a thing as a F84T12 VHO existed, that might be a pretty close match?

I don't think you will overheat the ballast, but the lamp or starter wont work reliably.
The starter is a voltage controlled timer switch:
If the voltage is above a set threshold, after some time it closes for some time. Tat is all it does, nothing more, nothing less.
Now to work as a starter in a preeat circuit, two conditions have to be met:
- The starter threshold voltage should be safely below the ballast OCV (peak) voltage. Otherwise the starter just wont close in the circuit.
- The starter threshold voltage should be safely above the lamp reignition peak voltage (voltage that needs to be reached after a current zero cross in order to reestablish the arc for the following halfwave of the AC supply). If this is not met, the starter "thinks" the lamp has not yet ignited and closes over and over again, yielding permanent flashing.

Now the glowbottle starters use a glow discharge as the voltage sensing (higher voltage ignites the glow discharge, which then actuates the contact by its heat). The problem is, the glow discharge is very temperamental on its ignition voltage and is highly sensitive to external light conditions. Unfortunately the higher ambient light level means the triggering voltage decreases, so it tends to not respond in dark and then constantly flashing the fluorescent at the same time.  So to work reliably, there should be sufficient voltage margin between the lamp arc voltage (and consequently the reignition spikes) and the ballast OCV.
The MV does not need such margin, because it does not use any starter, so it is OK to go as high as 140V arc with 230V OCV. Bot with fluorescents, to leave enough margin for the starter, you can not go much above 100V (the 105V of the F40T12 is pretty much the maximum you may go).
If you would be using something else for the starter (e.g. a manual preheat, or an electronic starter like S10e or so), you may get tighter, of course (you will be limited just by the OCV ability to reignite the arc after the zero cross, so 130V should work).