mario-kart | Mario Kart clone written in C and Allegro | Game Engine library

I want the player's ship to explode when the enemies hit you, how would I go about this?

I assume you are asking about creating the actual visual effect of an explosion. LÖVE's particle system has all the functionality to create that sort of animation / effect, but can be a bit overkill if you are just starting out.

A simple alternative would be to remove the player's ship and replace it with an animated sprite of an explosion. You could use a library to handle the animation code for you, or just use it as a reference point for your own animation code.

An animation usually consists of multiple frames or images which are displayed in a sequence. E.g. a very simple animation could look like this:

1. Frame: Small Explosion
2. Frame: Explosion gets bigger
3. Frame: Explosion gets smaller again
4. Frame: Smoke appears
5. Frame: Smoke vanishes and animation is finished

Each of these frames would be contained in one big image or spritesheet.

In LÖVE you will have to load the spritesheet and divide it into its frames by using quads: