It is pretty amazing to live in a time when it is possible to broadcast data through satellites to pretty much the whole planet. The Blockstream Satellite project makes this possible. 

Their Satellite network not only broadcasts the Bitcoin blockchain around the world 24/7 for free but also provides an API that allows everybody to broadcast messages through this network. This is possible for for a small fee payable through the Bitcoin lightning network.

To make it easy to broadcast messages from any ruby application I’ve written the blocksteam satellite gem.

The ruby package sends broadcast orders to the API and uses a connected lightning (lnd) node to pay for the order.

Check out the quick example:

require "blockstream_satellite"

order = BlockstreamSatellite::Order.create(path: '/path/to/file')

puts order.status #=> pending
order.pay # sends the lightning payment using the configured lnd client

puts order.status #=> transmitting
order.refresh
puts order.status #=> sent

Have fun using ruby to send data to space and back!