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The big dish antennas do use ruby masers, but not to transmit. The maser is used as the LNA on the receive side. Check out the picture on page 41 of the pdf, clearly this a flux capacitor, mislabeled to deceive us ;)

https://descanso.jpl.nasa.gov/monograph/series10/03_Reid_cha...

https://www.rfcafe.com/references/popular-electronics/amazin...

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Cool use of maser for receive.

Not having thought this through before, I see now that while a transmit maser may have efficiency advantages, it may not improve directionality relative to a standard parabolic radio transmitter. All methods of producing microwaves will have basically the same diffraction-limited gain for a given “aperture” (dish) size. That darn uncertainty principle! (However, an optical laser would still give way better directionality.)

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