Cars use gasoline but jets use something closer to diesel, maybe kerosene, that’s less combustible. Wouldn’t they need a _more_ volatile or explosive fuel to get the most thrust for performance?
In: Engineering
In a jet engine you want: lots of energy, high safety, easy operation.
As other commenters said, all petroleum fuels have pretty close energy density (it varies a bit but not enough to care). So you could use gasoline, diesel, kerosene, whatever.
For high safety you want *low* volatility. You want it to light when you want it to and *not* otherwise. Gasoline is volatile AF. Poor safety. Jet fuel (which is near kerosene or diesel) is great…very hard to light accidentally, and jets run so hot and continuous that lighting it in the engine isn’t an issue. Yay safety.
For easy operation you want a fuel that stays stable over wide ranges of time and temperature and pressure. Jet fuel is great for that. Gasoline sucks.
Now, you do want these features in cars too, so you really should be asking why cars use gasoline, rather than why do jets use jet fuel. Because basically everyone *except* cars uses something diesel-like for all the reasons above. And here we get to ignition…Otto cycle engines are the only ones that use a spark plug to run continuously. So the fuel ignition properties are *really* important to them, and basically nobody else. And so they’re stuck with gasoline.
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