It is a common opinion, that technical risk assessment is an important activity in small and large design and development projects in the space industry. Not only managers profess that belief, but also the engineers within a project agree with that view. It is, however, astonishing to see how rarely a thorough and continuous effort in this field is undertaken in day-to-day project life, especially in small to medium size companies and in small projects. The paper attempts to identify possible reasons for this phenomenon, based on methods and tools used for technical risk assessment in a medium sized company and on the practice of applying these on a range of projects.