How The Matter Transmitter Works

Poul Anderson, The Enemy Stars, 5.

Teleportation is too expensive for anything but interstellar travel so there are still interplanetary spaceships.

The millions of molecules in each of the 10 to the power of 14 cells in a human body must be simultaneously scanned and structurally identified and their momentary energy levels and relationships to every other molecule noted although they cannot be permanently recorded. The scanning beam, modified by every scanned atom, sends the modifications into the transmitter matrix while reducing the scanned organism to gas. The modulated, and relayed, carrier wave is gravitational, therefore instantaneous.

If permanent recordings were possible, then they would lead to molecular duplication but that is another issue.