Honestly wouldn't that be a much better death than cancer, or a stroke, or bleeding to death in a car wreck, or most other ways? a couple of minutes in free fall as the ground gets closer.
"While analyzing the wreckage, investigators discovered that several electrical system switches on Pilot Mike Smith's right-hand panel had been moved from their usual launch positions. These switches were protected with lever locks that required them to be pulled outward against a spring force before they could be moved to a new position. Later tests established that neither force of the explosion nor the impact with the ocean could have moved them, indicating that Smith made the switch changes."
I know that quote and others are from astronaut Mike Mullane's book called Riding Rockets (which is really good in its own right), the other detail is that three of the emergency air packs were turned on, which has to be manually done, and a few minutes worth of air was breathed from them. They likely spent at least part of the decent desperately trying to gain control of the orbiter, not knowing there was nothing left of it behind them
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