I own Edit International News Agency - In the past I worked for Life Magazine, New York Times, London Sunday Times and various international prestige publications. When the Challenger explosion took place I worked on the story for London’s The Mail on Sunday newspaper. In the massive confusion following the disaster I walked around the control center independent of any supervision. I entered one room and heard technicians crying and actually wailing; I heard someone say “They were alive all the way down. They may even live under water for a time.” That’s when they noticed me in the doorway and hastily shoved me outside to a security officer who sent me off. I called London and told a news desk editor what I’d heard. He said it was just too shocking and incredible to use. And that was the end of it.
Ron Laytner, www.editinternational.com; ron@editinternational.com
Did you ever write for Weekly World News? I recognized your style.
How would the technicians have known this? IIRC it was only through the autopsy results that this was determined, which would have been quite some time after the disaster.
Link to column in question: Did the astronauts survive the Challenger explosion long enough to realize their plight? - The Straight Dope
Welcome, Ron. It’s customary to put a link to the column in question in your post…especially when the column you’re commenting on is 14 years old… 
Glad to have you here.
They couldn’t have. The couldn’t have ‘known’ that they died instantly, either.
I’m sure any comments would have been speculation at that point, but anyone that’s watched the pieces of an Indy car peel away during a wreck, leaving only a small cage with a surviving driver would have assumed there was a good chance of the astronauts surviving the initial explosion. There would be a good chance of them dying immediately, too, depending where the explosion took place (an explosion that occurred in the shuttle itself would have been more likely to kill them immediately).
There would have been no way of knowing until the source of the explosion was pinpointed and the bodies recovered. Which was at least part of the point of the article - that NASA hurt their credibility by making initial reports that not only couldn’t be known, but later turned out to be wrong.
Of course, publishing an article debunking NASA’s version based on technicians initial speculations would have been nearly as irresponsible as what NASA did. At most, it would have raised some questions that the media would have been very interested in asking.
Edit International’s lead story today: “MOON SHOT VIEWED BY WITCH DOCTOR”
Other stories: “SECRET UFO ARCHIVES OPENED”, “HITLER’S STEALTH BOMBER REBUILT”
Can’t you post links, not just text? I want to read that stealth bomber article, but too lazy to search it…
Because, assuming they really are smart enough to be rocket scientists (hey, they work for NASA, right? On space ships?) they will be able to know that it is possible the astronauts were not killed instantly even without extensive analysis and autopsy results. It sounds to me like someone was voicing their worst fear, not necessarily stating a known truth.
The flip side is when a bunch of us pilots at the local airport were watching the Columbia breakup on TV as it was occuring and someone said “they’re all dead for sure”. How could he know that? Simple - sufficient understanding of physics that human beings couldn’t survive the situation as reported. Later analysis confirmed that off-the-cuff layman deduction. With the Challenger accident I’m sure quite a few people at NASA realized the possibility the astronauts survived the initial breakup for a brief period of time, even if there was no way to be immediately sure of it.
Just use the link provided in the first post.
Sorry, I was being czarcastic. You don’t really think I want to read about Hitler’s Stealth Bomber, do you??
They may have been alive and even conscious all the way down - some astronauts clearly survived the explosion, but how long they were alive and awake is unknown and probably unknowable now. But there is no way they survived under water “for a time”. At the speed they were travelling, the impact with the water would have been fatal.
I suspect this is part of the reason why NASA’s spokespeople decided to say the astronauts had been killed instantly - that lie helped to explain why they immediately started looking for bodies, not survivors, and was less harrowing both for the speakers and the listeners than the alternative 
OTOH, did they still have telemetry from the nose section all the way down?
However, IIRC, they were not wearing closed helmets, so would have passed out for sure from lack of oxygen shortly. The nose section was relatively intact but I have trouble imagining it staying air-tight. (Were they wearing their helmets?)
The Main Cabin (what I think you mean when you refer to the nose section) does not have any independent telemetry and no data was collected during descent. Whether the crew would have passed out due to rapid decompression or oxygen depletion has been discussed extensively among experts without definitive conclusion; however, it is widely accepted as being at least plausible that some of the crew could have been conscious during descent, though they certainly would have died from mechanical shock upon impact to the ocean’s surface. The claim that some of the astronauts “…tried to save themselves and may even have been alive when the cabin smashed into the sea at 200 MPH,” stems from the apparent activation of emergency oxygen packs attached to or next to the seats (intended to be used in the case of an on-pad hazardous atmosphere scenario). However, it is unlikely that even the astronauts who could reach the packs from their sitting position would have been able to do so in the rapidly spinning cabin, and the devices may have been jarred into activation upon impact. Regardless, given the design of the STS, there is no effective abort mode prior to Solid Rocket Booster (SRB) separation, which was one of the main drivers to returning to a blunt-arsed capsule design on an in-line booster.
BTW, the Challenger did not explode as described by the o.p. Rather, the hydrogen and oxygen tanks in the External Tank (ET) were breached due to the escaping plume from the field joint on one of the Solid Rocket Boosters, and the resulting vapor combusted; the damage from the combustion and pressure wave to the Orbiter would have been minor; however, the loss of aerodynamic stability and the inertial jerking that occurred from the tank coming unshipped from the Orbiter induced strong bending and torsional forces onto the Orbiter’s structure, causing it to break into several pieces. The SRBs did explode after separation from the ET as the Range Safety Office sent the flight termination signal to the FTS which ignited the linear shaped charges that split open the boosters. (This is done to prevent hazard from uncontrolled flight of the boosters off-range.) [post=8796614]Here[/post] is an old post where I detail the timeline of the breakup.
As far as the o.p.'s claim that “In the massive confusion following the disaster I walked around the control center independent of any supervision,” I have to call uncategorical bullshit on this assertion. During launch operations at Canaveral, the Launch Control Room is secured, and no one is allowed in or out from final countdown to Main Engine Cut-Off (MECO) without the express permission of the Launch Conductor. The same is true of Mission Control at JSC, or at least was when Gene Kranz was Flight Director. (There is a long-standing, if informal, tradition of taking the “pre-launch S&P” prior to being secured inside the control room.) Nobody would be walking around the control room talking to flight controllers, “…independent of any supervision.” Any observers, such as media and public figures, would be up in the observation gallery which looks out over the floor. This is standard procedure at most ranges even for small commercial and suborbital vehicles, much less manned vehicles. You just don’t want someone distracting or bumping the elbow of a Flight Officer during some critical point in ascent.
Stranger
Yeah, the more detail I hear, the more likely OP’s exhibiting the journalistic quality that has netted so many great stories through the years… (Edit International’s lead story today: “MOON SHOT VIEWED BY WITCH DOCTOR” Other stories: “SECRET UFO ARCHIVES OPENED”, “HITLER’S STEALTH BOMBER REBUILT”)
Well, on this topic, there really was a stealthy fighter built and flown. The Horten 2-29 was flown just before Christmass in 1944. A scale model was recently built and tested recently by Northrop Grumman. Here is the link, Horten 2-29.